Carlos Finlay
Cuban physician discoverer of means of transmission of yellow fever through biological vector (1833–1915)
Carlos Juan Finlay (December 3, 1833 – August 20, 1915) was a Cuban epidemiologist recognized as a pioneer in the research of yellow fever, determining that it was transmitted through mosquitoes Aedes aegypti.
Biography
Early life and education
Finlay was born Juan Carlos Finlay y de Barrés in Puerto Príncipe (now Camagüey), Cuba to Scottish-born Dr. Edward (Eduardo) Finlay and French-born Elisa (Isabel) de Barrés.
At that time Cuba was part of the Kingdom of Spain. He reversed the order of his given names to "Carlos Juan" later in his life. His father was a physician who had fought alongside Simón Bolívar, and his family owned a coffee plantation in Alquízar. He attended school in France in 1844, but was forced to return to Cuba after two years because he contracted chorea.
After recovering, he returned to Europe in 1848, but became stuck in England for another two years due to political turmoil, and after arriving in France to continue his education, he contracted typhoid fever and again returned to Cuba.
Because the University of Havana would not recognize his European academic credits, he enrolled at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which did not require prerequisites. Here Finlay met John Kearsley Mitchell, a proponent of the germ theory of disease, and his son Silas Weir Mitchell, who supervised his studies.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q742233. VIAF identifies the subject as 36908036. The Library of Congress control number is n82012334. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1833, 1915, 1844 and 1848.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carlos Finlay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.