Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum has for more than five decades displayed outstanding courage, intelligence and scientific rigor in research and training in the DRC. In particular, in 1976 he identified the existence of a previously unknown disease in his country, collected blood and tissue samples under dangerous conditions, and forwarded them to the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium where the Ebola virus was discovered. Since 1976 Dr. Muyembe-Tamfum has been on the front lines of Ebola research, identifying nosocomial and burial transmission as two of the major causes of disease transmission, contributing to vaccine research, developing antisera therapy and training a new generation of disease responders and Congolese laboratory scientists.