Leeuwenhoek's animalcules included protozoa. The nineteenth century tied some of them to disease; the twentieth split the group on molecular trees.
Ross and Grassi mapped mosquito stages of malaria. That geography still saves lives when nets and drugs reach people.
Timeline
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek describes motile specks from water and teeth — protozoa among them.
Georg Goldfuss uses Protozoa for 'first animals' — a name that outlived the zoology.
Alphonse Laveran finds pigmented parasites in blood — protozoa enter tropical medicine.
Ronald Ross demonstrates mosquito stages of bird malaria, opening the vector map.
David Bruce ties tsetse flies to nagana and sleeping-sickness trypanosomes.
Stains from the early 1900s remain daily tools for malaria films in many clinics.
rRNA trees shatter a single protozoan kingdom into distant eukaryotic clades.
WHO recommends RTS,S for children in selected regions — a protozoan vaccine after decades.
Protozoan history is empire, wetlands and microscopes — not only a Latin list.
Keep exploring
More in Tree of microbes
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