Ronald Ross was born in Almora, India, North West of Nepal, the eldest of ten children of Sir Campbell Claye Grant Ross, General in the British Indian Army, and Matilda Charlotte Elderton. At age eight he was sent to England to live with his aunt and uncle on the Isle of Wight. He attended Primary schools at Ryde, and for secondary education he was sent to a boarding school at Springhill, near Southampton, in 1869. From his early childhood he developed passion for poetry, music, literature and mathematics. At fourteen years of age he won a prize for mathematics, a book titled Orbs of Heaven which sparked his interest in mathematics. In 1873, at sixteen, he secured first position in the Oxford and Cambridge local examination in drawing. Although he wanted to become a Writer, his father arranged enrollment at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College in London, in 1874. Not fully committed, he spent most of his time composing music, and writing poems and plays. He left in 1880. In 1879 he had passed the examinations for the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and he worked as a ship's surgeon on a transatlantic steamship while studying for the licenciate of the Society of Apothecaries. He qualified on second attempt in 1881, and after a four-month training at Army Medical School, he entered Indian Medical Service in 1881. Between June 1888 and May 1889 he took study leave to obtain the Diploma in Public Health from the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons, and took a course in bacteriology under Professor E. E. Klein.