Professor Sir Nick White’s career transformed the landscape of malaria research and global health. Over decades, he shaped our understanding of malaria treatment, particularly through his relentless focus on staying ahead of drug resistance and ensuring that evidence, not convenience or convention, guided policy and practice. 

His work in Thailand laid the foundations for strengthening research capacity across the region, but his influence extended far beyond any single geography. Nick was a tireless champion for equity in access to medicines, especially life-saving malaria treatments, and a powerful voice within WHO and global programmes, consistently pushing for evidence-led decision-making so that the right treatments were recommended, available, and accessible to the most vulnerable communities. Few have done more to ensure that scientific excellence translated into real-world impact.

On a personal level, I first had the privilege of working with Nick in the late 1990s, when I was a clinical trial manager in industry working on malaria programmes. He was immensely supportive, a generous mentor, a wise guide at a formative stage in my career, and a passionate advocate for public-private partnerships when they could genuinely accelerate the development of affordable, effective combination therapies for malaria. Those were the early days of collaborations that are now central to global health, and Nick was highly influential in shaping initiatives such as Roll Back Malaria, MMV, and DNDi.

Nick was very supportive of the early ideas of The Global Health Network and was a great source of guidance and ideas from the outset. Throughout its development Nick’s encouragement and support was formative and highly encouraging of the unusual approach we were taking in creating a community that was purposefully cross-cutting, recognising as he did the power and necessity for networks to tackle the gaps in health research capabilities by connecting between disease areas and types of research. That encouragement was instrumental and greatly appreciated. 

Nick touched countless lives, through the advances he drove in malaria research, through his leadership in confronting drug resistance, and through the careers he guided and nurtured with such care. His intellect was formidable, but it was matched by his humanity, generosity, and unwavering commitment to fairness and evidence in global health. He was also a lot of fun. 

We will miss you, Nick. Thank you for all that you gave to tackling malaria, to the global health research community and to so many of us personally.