Albert Freeman Africanus King (1841 - 1914)

Renowned physician Dr Albert Freeman Africanus King - one of the first people to make the connection between mosquitoes and malaria - was actually born in Ambrosden!

Born in 1841, Albert was the third child of Edward King and Louisa King (née Freeman).
He was given the unusual middle name of 'Africanus' due to his father's apparent 'love of the continent'.

On 26th August 1854, Albert and his family decided to emigrate, and left Liverpool aboard a ship destined for the United States; they arrived in New Jersey on 7th September that year. They settled firstly in Alexandria, Virginia.

After achieving a degree from what is now known as the George Washington University Medical School, Albert became a surgeon in the US Army, eventually going on to become a lecturer on toxicology, before obtaining a second degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

On 14th April 1865, Albert was among the crowd who witnessed the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and helped to carry the dying man to a house across the street.

In the years that followed, Albert enjoyed a career as a prominent and renowned doctor. In 1882, King proposed a method to eradicate malaria from Washington, DC. His method was to encircle the city with a wire screen as high as the Washington Monument. Many people took this as a jest, partly because the link between malaria and mosquitoes had, at that time, been hypothesized by only a few physicians. It was not until 1898 that Ronald Ross proved mosquitoes were a vector for malaria (he won the Nobel Prize for the discovery just four years later). However impractical, King was on the right track for malaria control, well in advance of the rest of the medical profession.

He married Ellen Amory Dexter of Boston, Massachusetts, with whom he had two daughters: Louisa Freeman King and Sarah Vincent King.

Albert died in Washington DC on 13th December 1914, with his cause of death being cited as 'senile debility'.