Robert Knowles (parasitologist)

Giuseppe Franchini published in 1927 what is generally believed to be the first description of the Plasmodium species now known as P. knowlesi. At the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, in 1931 H. G. M. Campbell detected P. knowlesi in a macaque imported from Singapore. Campbell showed his discovery to his supervisor L. Everard Napier, who injected the strain into three monkeys, one of which developed symptoms of malaria. Aware of the Protozoological Department's search for a monkey malaria strain, Napier and Campbell gave the infected monkey to the physician Biraj Mohan Das Gupta, working under Knowles. Das Gupta maintained the Plasmodium species by serial passage in monkeys until Knowles returned from leave. In 1932, Knowles and Das Gupta published their description of the Plasmodiium species and their account of how it could be transmitted from monkey to human by blood passage to three human volunteers.^[4] The Plasmodium species was named Plasmodium knowlesi by Sinton and Mulligan in 1932. The first natural infection of P. knowlesi in humans was observed in 1965.^[1]

• with Ronald Senior-White: Malaria: its investigation and control with special reference to Indian conditions. Thacker, Spink & Co. 1927.
• with H. W. Acton: On the dysenteries of India, with a chapter on secondary streptococcal infections and sprue. 1928.
• An introduction to medical protozoology, with chapters on the spirochætes and on laboratory methods. 1928.
  • with revision and abridgment by Biraj Mohan Das Gupta: Knowles's introduction to medical protozoology (2nd ed.). Calcutta: U. N. Dhur & Sons. 1944.
• with Biraj Mohan Dasgupta and Ronald Senior-White: Studies in the parasitology of malaria. Indian Medical Research Memoirs 18. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co. 1930.