Ronald Ross: Renaissance Man

After Sir Ronald Ross (1857—1932) died, the British Poet Laureate Sir John Masefield noted in The Times, "He was an extraordinary man, for he made himself famous as a poet, and was an eminent mathematician, a clever painter, and a skilled musician" [1]. Indeed, Ross published numerous books of poetry that won the praise of famous poets; several well-received novels and plays; and many mathematical treatises, including a book on solving complex equations by iteration; he also painted (Fig. 1) and composed throughout his life [2]. Amazingly, this is the same Ronald Ross who earned a medical degree and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his discovery of the life cycle of the malaria parasite.

Ross's wide range of talents emerged early. Ross was born in India to a father who was a British military officer of more than average talents in painting and music. The elder Ross would begin nearly every day by painting a scene of India [3], and in the evenings he would sing and composed music "to which Ronald would set piano accompaniments" [4]. Ronald was sent to British public schools in England when he was eight. These schools were unusual for the time in offering "extras" such as playing piano, singing, drawing and painting in addition to the standard literary and mathematical education [5]. Ross excelled. At 14, he won the school prize for mathematics. At 15, he took trips to the Isle of Wight and to Ireland, where someone (probably one of his many artistically inclined relatives) gave him watercolor lessons. A sketchbook from this trip shows an incredibly swift progression from the skill of an outright novice to good mastery of the technique in what must have been mere months. He attributed his swift progress to "watching my father make his admirable water-colour drawings" [6]. His mastery was confirmed when, at 16, he was "bracketed first in all England for drawing at the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examination—my success being due to a pencil copy of Raphael's Torchbearer, which, as I remember perfectly, was done in a few minutes and was almost exact" [7]. The next year he announced that he intended to become an artist. His father forbade it, insisting that Ross become a military physician, a career for which Ross had no inclination or desire. Nonetheless, Ross acquiesced, recognizing that "it would give me experience of life in India, with shooting and riding, and also a knowledge of biology and considerable leisure for any other hobbies I might have a mind for" [8].

Ross's concept of "leisure" was idiosyncratic. He set himself "a definite though audacious programme" of education in addition to his medical studies: "I should seek every possible experience and try my hand at every possible art" [9]. Thus, he continued to draw and paint, and took up clay sculpting, the flute, piano, musical composition, playwriting and writing verse, filling in the remaining spare time with extended excursions into mathematics [10]. One of the products of these years was the poem "Ambition" on the subject of his polymathic goals, which begins:

Fig. 1.

Ronald Ross, At Ryde, watercolor, 1872.

(© David Ross. Courtesy of the Archives, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London.) A sailing ship painted in 1872 by Ronald Ross when he was 15 years old.

I live to buy in every mart;To try the hand at every art;In every science take a part;With every passion prove the heart.

[11]

Because Ross carried out this audacious scheme, it would be easy to view him as a dilettante, but he had higher ambitions. Even as a very young man, he recognized, perhaps through discussions with his father, that "the same laws of form appertain to all great arts, from the Iliad and the pediments of the Parthenon to Shakespeare, Massinger, Raphael, and Beethoven, and these must all be studied together if they are to be studied effectively at all" [12]. That he also treated his science and mathematics as forms of art is beyond dispute. In...