Luc Montagnier
| Luc Antoine Montagnier | |
|---|---|
Luc Montagnier, 2008
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| Born |
18 August 1932 Chabris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Virology |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | University of Paris |
| Known for | Discovery of HIV |
| Notable awards | 1988 Japan Prize 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine |
Luc Antoine Montagnier (born 18 August 1932) is a French virologist and joint recipient with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A long-time researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, he currently works as a full-time professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
In 2009, Montagnier published two controversial research studies that some homeopaths claimed as support for homeopathy. Although Montagnier disputed any such support, many scientists greeted his claims with scorn and harsh criticism.
In 1982, Willy Rozenbaum, a clinician at the Hôpital Bichat hospital in Paris, asked Montagnier for assistance in establishing the cause of a mysterious new syndrome, AIDS (known at the time as "Gay-related immune deficiency" or GRID). Rozenbaum had suggested at scientific meetings that the cause of the disease might be a retrovirus. Montagnier and members of his group at the Pasteur Institute, notably including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann, had extensive experience with retroviruses. Montagnier and his team examined samples taken from Rozenbaum's AIDS patients and found the virus that would later become known as HIV in a lymph node biopsy. They named it "lymphadenopathy-associated virus", or LAV, since it was not yet clear that it was the cause of AIDS, and published their findings in the journal Science in 1983.
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