Frederick Murphy, dean emeritus and a veterinary virologist at UC Davis who was the first person to capture an image of the Ebola virus with an electron microscope, was elected this week to the Institute of Medicine, one of the highest honors for a health researcher. The UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine professor was the only veterinarian among this year's 55 newly elected members of the institute. An internationally distinguished authority on emerging diseases, Murphy served as director of the federal Center for Infectious Diseases before coming to UC Davis in 1991. Prior to that, he served the Centers for Disease Control as director of the Division of Viral Disease and as chief of viral pathology. He also served from 1978 to 1982 as an associate dean and professor of microbiology at Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. At the Centers for Disease Control, Murphy played a role in the initial discovery of the Ebola virus in 1976 and in investigating the outbreak of Ebola in monkeys in Virginia and Texas in 1989-90. He also has worked extensively on rabies, viral encephalitis and other diseases transmitted from animals to humans. He has recently been involved in efforts of the National Academy of Sciences to make sure that biological-warfare research institutes in the former Soviet Union are permanently converted to peaceful purposes such as vaccine research. Murphy received a doctoral degree in comparative pathology at UC Davis in 1964. He also holds a bachelor's degree in bacteriology and a doctoral degree in veterinary medicine, both from Cornell University. The Institute of Medicine, chartered in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, enlists distinguished members of medical and related professions to examine public health issues. Members are elected on the basis of major career contributions to health, medicine or related fields. They commit their time as volunteers on committees engaged in a broad range of studies of health problems throughout the world.