Co-discoverer of HIV Luc Montagnier Dies at 89

Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who shared a Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering the virus that causes AIDS, died at the age of 89.

French media first reported that Montagnier had died at the American hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 8 February. Local authorities later officially confirmed his death on Thursday.

News site FranceSoir reported he died on Tuesday in Neuilly-sur-Seine "surrounded by his children".

Montagnier was credited as a co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He was lauded for this valuable work but later criticized for unscientific claims about autism and Covid-19.

“He was always controversial, but I had the greatest respect for the team he assembled,” said Donald P. Francis, who directed the AIDS laboratory at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Born in 1932 in the central French town of Chabris, the virologist began working at Paris's Faculty of Sciences in 1955.

Later on, he moved to the Pasteur Institute in 1972, and after his work on HIV led the foundation before moving to Queens College, the City University of New York in 1997.