Luc Montagnier

French virologist noted as the 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).

He was the first person to discover the virus responsible for AIDS, though another claimed the same distinction, American Robert Gallo, at close to the same time. The clash arose as each called the virus by different initials but in 1986, three years after the discovery, the two mutually agreed on the designation HIV.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Montagnier promoted the conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus, was deliberately created and escaped from a laboratory. Such a claim has been rejected by other virologists.

Luc Montagnier married Dorothea Ackerman in 1961, and they had three children. He died on 8 February 2022 at the age of 89 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.