Some of the early and significant members of the anti-virus/anti-malware community.  Thanks to Kenneth Bechtel for most of this list of pioneers.

Ken Bechtel - (Bechtel, Kenneth)

Vesselin Bontchev - (Bontchev, Vesselin)
Early virus researcher, with F-Prot

Stephen Cobb - (Cobb, Stephen)
Formerly with NCSA, early author, now with ESET

Fred Cohen - (Cohen, Fred)
Originator of the term computer virus

Richard Ford - (Ford, Richard)
Early Virus Bulletin Editor, NCSA currently Florida Institute of Technology Professor

Sarah Gordon- (Gordon, Sarah)
Early researcher, worked for many of the early AV products, lots of Social research

Dmitry Gryaznov - (Gryaznov, Dmitry)
Early researcher worked background for Dr Solomon’s now with McAfee

David Harley - (Harley, David)
Long time pundit, worked public sector, now semi-retired doing freelance work with ESET

Mich Kabay - (Kabay, Michel E)
Formerly with NCSA, now Norwich University

John McAfee - (McAfee, John)

Igor Muttik - (Muttik, Igor)
Early researcher worked background for Dr Solomon’s now with McAfee

Padgett Peterson - (Peterson, Padgett)

Rob Rosenberger - (Rosenberger, Rob)
Editor, author VMyths, security pundit, original cyber myth buster

Fridrik Skulason - (Skulason, Fridrik)
Creator F-Prot, early (Gen I) Virus Researcher

Rob Slade - (Slade, Robert)

George Smith - (Smith, George)
Early author

Alan Solomon - (Solomon, Alan)
Creator Dr Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit

Wolfgang Stiller - (Stiller, Wolfgang)
Creator of Integrity Master, early AV product, not reliant on signatures

Roger Thompson - (Thompson, Roger)
Created his first anti-virus product back in 1987, emigrated from OZ to the US  worked for NCSA/ ICSA, his own consultancy, AVG, and now CTO of West Coast labs.

Peter Tippet - (Tippet,    Peter)
Creator of Novi (very early AV product) sold to Norton, moved to NCSA

Kenneth Van Wyk - (Van Wyk, Kenneth)
Very early virus researcher, named Lehigh Virus while at university of Lehigh, early Virus-L/alt.comp.virus moderator

Frans Veldman - (Veldman, Frans)
Creator of ThunderByte, early AV used Heuristics more than strings

Joe Wells - (Wells, Joe)
Worked on Novi, then for Norton founded the Wild List

Eddie Williams - (Williams, Eddie)
Early AV evangelist, maintained the ‘semi-official’ anti-virus webpage (links to all legit AV references)

Rigard Zwienberg - (Zwienberg, Rigard)
Early researcher, one of the first to maintain ThunderByte