William Close

William Taliaferro Close (1924 to 2009) was an American surgeon who helped contain the 1976 outbreak of Ebola virus in Zaire, the first major outbreak of that disease in Central Africa. Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, he served as an Army Air Corps pilot in the Second World War, then studied at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and trained in surgery at Roosevelt Hospital in New York. In 1960 he went to the Belgian Congo, where he was the only surgeon in Leopoldville during the upheavals, and later ran the Mama Yemo Hospital in Kinshasa for President Mobutu, whom he also served as personal physician and as surgeon general of the army. He built a hospital ship that took care and medical education to remote villages. Research at his hospital contributed to understanding of HIV and AIDS. He was the father of the actress Glenn Close.