Marc Armand Ruffer


Sir Marc Armand Ruffer CMG was a Swiss-born British experimental pathologist and bacteriologist. He is considered a pioneer of modern paleopathology.

Family

Ruffer was born in Lyon, the son of Swiss banker Baron Alphonse Jacques Ruffer and his German wife, Caroline, who were resident in Switzerland at time of his own death. Ruffer married Alice Mary Greenfield in 1890 and had three children, including Nina Ruffer, who studied anthropology at Somerville College, Oxford and was mentioned by Vera Brittain in the Testament of Youth.

Education

He was educated in Germany and France before attending Brasenose College, Oxford and reading medicine University College London. He also studied at the Pasteur Institute in Paris under Louis Pasteur.

Career

Ruffer was naturalized as a British citizen in 1890. In 1891, he was appointed the first director of the British Institute of Preventive Medicine, latterly the Lister Institute.
Moving to Egypt for health reasons, Ruffer was appointed a professor of bacteriology at in 1896, later taking roles on committees dealing with health, disease, and sanitation. In Egypt he worked on the histology of mummies publishing his findings and helping to establish the field of paleopathology.
Ruffer was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1905 and knighted in 1916. He also received the Grand Cross of the Ottoman Orders of Osmanieh and the Medjidie, the Order of the Redeemer of Greece, and was Commander in the Order of St Anne of Russia and the Crown of Italy.
He went to Greece during the First World War in capacity as Commissioner of the British Red Cross Society to improve sanitation. Returning to Egypt on board the ship on 15 April 1917, his ship was torpedoed off the Greek coast near the island of Milos without warning by the German submarine with the loss of 279 lives, 35 of which were crew.
He was seen twice in the sea, first alive and upright and then floating, believed dead. His body was never recovered from the sea. He was declared legally dead in 1918.
After research by the In from the Cold Project, he was accepted on 17 September 2016 for commemoration by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on their Mikra Memorial in Kalamaria, Thessaloniki, Greece, to those who have no known grave.
Lady Ruffer died in Alexandria in 1950.