was in his time. His description of the specific characteristics responsible for benign tertian (Haemamoeba vivax), malignant tertian (Laverania malariae, renamed P. falciparum) and quartan (Haemamoeba malariae, renamed P. malariae) malaria resolved the confusion of the time. In addition, his monograph also presented the first conclusive depiction that the bite of only female Anopheles mosquitoes could transmit malaria. In a classic experiment, he dispatched 112 volunteers to the Capaccio plains, a malaria-endemic area, protected them from mosquito bites between dusk and dawn, and they did not get malaria (except five of them) compared with 415 unprotected volunteers who all contracted malaria. In 1898 he and Bignami were able to produce the final proof of mosquito transmission of malaria when they fed local mosquitoes (A. claviger) on infected patients and found that uninfected individuals developed malaria through the mosquito bite. Controversy The 1902 Nobel Prize The 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Ronald Ross for his discovery of the life cycle of malarial parasite (or as the Nobel citation goes: for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism...). However, this was disputed and continues to be disputed to this day. Grassi was the first to suggest that there must be some developmental stage of Plasmodium in the white blood cells. In 1897, he and his associates established the developmental stages of malaria parasites in anopheline mosquitoes; and they described the complete life cycles of P. falciparum, P. vivax and P. malariae the following year. When the Nobel nomination was called, there began a fiery polemic over priority between him and Ross. The situation was worsened with the involvement of Robert Koch. The initial opinion of the Nobel Committee was that the prize should be shared between Ross and Grassi. Then Ross made a defamatory campaign accusing Grassi of deliberate fraud. Koch was appointed as a "neutral arbitrator" in the committee, and as reported, "[He] threw the full weight of his considerable authority in insisting that Grassi did not deserve the honor" (Grassi would later point out flaws in Koch's own methodology on malarial research). Ross was the first to show that malarial parasite was transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes, in his case the avian Plasmodium relictum. But Grassi's work revealed that human malarial parasites were carried only by female Anopheles. He identified the mosquito species correctly, in his