Report on the conference held to mark the centenary of the death of Alphonse Laveran

On November 24, at the École du Val-de-Grâce, the French Military Medical Service (SSA) paid a scientific and historical tribute to Alphonse Laveran at a conference organized to mark the centenary year of his death.

The event took place under the scientific patronage of the French National Academy of Medicine and the Institut Pasteur in Paris, in collaboration with the French-Speaking Society for Tropical Medicine and International Health (formerly the Society for Exotic Diseases, founded in 1907 by Alphonse Laveran) and six other learned societies.

For this formal commemoration, alongside the authorities of the École du Val-de-Grâce and the SSA, Stewart Cole gave an address in which he welcomed the initiative to hold a conference in such a prestigious venue to pay tribute to Alphonse Laveran, a "true pioneer, founder of modern parasitology and tropical medicine."

Several Institut Pasteur scientists spoke during the two main sessions, one entitled "Laveran: army doctor, scientist and discoverer of the malaria parasite" and the other asking the question "After Laveran, how should we contemplate the world of tomorrow?" Alongside several other prestigious speakers, they contributed additional historical and scientific details from the life story of the Institut Pasteur scientist, laureate of the 1907 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, who discovered the protozoan responsible for malaria.

Photos: SSA/IRBA

Institut Pasteur scientists who attended this event organized at the initiative of Jean-Nicolas Tournier, Head of the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the French Armed Forces Biomedical Research Institute (IRBA): Pierre Goossens, Geneviève Milon, Annick Perrot, Odile Puijalon, François Rodhain and Maxime Schwartz.

Download Stewart Cole's address

See the report on "Malaria and the globalization of disease"