Sir Ian McGregor


1922 - 2007

Malariologist. Born into a family of tailors in Cambuslang, he qualified from St Mungo College of Medicine in Glasgow in 1945. He was conscripted into the Royal Army Medical Corps and was posted to Palestine, where he took charge of malaria control. This led him to study at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and join a malaria research unit in the Gambia (1949). By 1954 he had become its Director and went on to build it into a world-class laboratory. McGregor was responsible for genuine advances in understanding malaria. He showed that humans exposed to repeated infection could acquire immunity and his work was of great importance to the management of malaria, laying the groundwork for understanding the disease. He finally left the Gambia in 1980 and was appointed a Professorial Fellow at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and also worked tirelessly for the World Health Organisation (WHO).

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and served as President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine (1983-85). He was awarded a CBE (1968) and was knighted in 1982.

His publications include many research papers and the book Malaria: The Principles and Practices of Malariology (1988).

McGregor died at his home in Wiltshire (England).


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