Sir Nicholas John White was a British physician and researcher specializing in tropical diseases who was born on 13 March 1951 and died on 1 February 2026[1]. During his nearly fifty-year career, he mainly devoted himself to malaria research and contributed to the transformation of its treatment at the global level[4]. Together with his colleague François Nostend, he discovered that artemisinin, a drug discovered by Chinese researchers, is rapidly metabolized in the body and therefore proposed to combine it with a longer-acting drug, leading to the development of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT)[2]. Tieto liečby boli bezpečnejšie a ľahšie na použitie ako chinin, ktorý bol štandardným liekom od 19. storočia[2]. His research using international clinical trials has provided evidence that artemisinin-based combination therapies have become the global standard for malaria treatment, including intravenous artesunate for the treatment of severe malaria[1]. In addition to malaria, he also researched other infectious diseases, including tetanus, dengue fever, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, he led the world's largest trial of potential preventive drugs[2]. Jeho práca zachránila milióny životov a jeho prínos bol uznaný britským rytierstvom v roku 2017[7].