Colloquium for the centenary of Alphonse Laveran’s death

The French Defence Central Health Service ("Service de Santé des Armées" or SSA) pay a scientific and historical tribute to Alphonse Laveran, with a symposium on November 24, 2022 at the Val-de-Grâce School, to mark the centenary of his death. This event is organized with the scientific sponsorship of the Académie nationale de médecine (National Academy of Medicine) and the Institut Pasteur in Paris, in collaboration with the Société francophone de médecine tropicale et santé internationale (former Société de pathologie exotique, founded in 1907 by Alphonse Laveran) and six other learned societies.

Alphonse Laveran, a military doctor and ‘Pasteurian’ researcher (at the Institut Pasteur), passed to posterity for the discovery of the haematozoa of malaria. This discovery, little known today, was rewarded with the Nobel Prize in 1907, received for the first time by a French citizen. This discovery was a fantastic conceptual breakthrough in the science, as it was the first time that a parasite causing an infectious disease was discovered in the red blood cells.

Alphonse Laveran was a pioneer and one of the most revolutionary minds of his time. He remains the founder of modern parasitology far beyond malaria.

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