About one third of the 50 million deaths that occur each year are caused by infectious diseases, making pathogenic organisms the world's number one killer. In Australia, our contribution to infectious diseases research has been disproportionate to our small size. Early work of Joseph Bancroft, Howard Florey, Macfarlane Burnet, Neil Hamilton-Fairley, Frank Fenner and Ralph Doherty, to name but a few, has inspired following Australian generations to continue the noble quest to understand the pathogenesis of these diseases.