Malaria has been in existence since ancient times, and for millennia thought to be carried by vapors. Ronald Ross' discovery of transmission of malaria by mosquitoes is an important milestone in the annals of the history of medicine. On this centennial year of that epic discovery, we would like to reminisce upon that event, focusing on the discoverer. Ross was born in India on May 13, 1857. As a youth, he aspired to be a poet, a novelist or a mathematician. His authoritarian father, a General in the British Army, decided that he should become a doctor. He was sent to St. Bartholomew's hospital in London to train in 1875. Upon graduation in 1881, he joined the Indian Medical Service. It was not until 1894, that Ross became a devout malaria researcher. Dr. Patrick Manson, famous for discovering the mosquito transmission of filariasis, became his mentor. Manson hypothesized that mosquitoes carried malaria to water, and man became infected by exposure to water. Ross pursued this theory with enthusiasm, despite lacking in background knowledge of mosquitoes or malaria. He bred mosquitoes from larvae, fed them on patients with malarial crescents and then dissected the mosquitoes looking for parasites similar to those seen in the patients' blood. Not knowing what species of mosquito to study nor how the derived parasite would appear, Ross dissected nearly 1000 mosquitoes before he succeeded. At Secunderabad, India, on August 20,1897, while dissecting a brown mosquito with speckled wings(Anopheles species), he saw the transformed malarial parasite with the typical black pigment in the stomach wall cells and made his discovery. He then wrote: “I find thy cunning seeds, O millionmurdering death, I know this little thing, A myriad men will save, O Death, where is thy sting? Thy victory, O Grave?” Despite his desire to build on his discovery, Ross was inexplicably transferred to a non-malarial area of India. In 1898, at Calcutta, he demonstrated the life cycle of the malarial parasite in the mosquito using avian malaria, and postulated that malaria is directly transmitted from mosquito to man, as it is with birds. He returned to England in 1899 as professor of tropical medicine at Liverpool. In 1902, he was awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery. Ross became embittered with the establishment during his later years, but it is the steadfast discoverer that we would like to remember on the 100th anniversary of this great discovery.