Montagnier, a French virologist, headed the team that discovered the universal immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS in 1983, earning him a Nobel Prize in medicine in 2008 alongside colleague Francoise Barré-Sinoussi.
Montagnier was born in Chabris and educated himself at the universities of Poitiers and Paris. Montagnier wedded Dorothea Ackerman in 1961, and the couple had three children. He died on February 8, 2022, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, at the age of 89.
Luc Montagnier was aFrench virologist who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald Zur Hausen for discovering the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He was a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris as well as a full-time lecturer at China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, Montagnier pushed the conspiracy idea that the causal virus, SARS-CoV-2, was intentionally developed and discharged from a laboratory. Other virologists have refuted such a claim. Other academics have attacked him for leveraging his Nobel Prize to 'promote harmful health ideas outside his domain of competence.'
