Luc Montagnier was born in France in 1932. He was educated at the Universities of Poitiers and Paris, and received degrees in science in 1953 and in medicine in 1960. He began his career as a research scientist in 1955 and joined the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1972.
In the early 1980s, Montagnier and a team at the Pasteur Institute that included Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, identified the retrovirus that eventually became known as HIV. Controversy ensued over who first isolated the virus, Montagnier or American scientist Robert Gallo. In 1987, the U.S. and French governments agreed to share credit for the discovery although Montagnier’s team is generally acknowledged as having first identified the virus.
Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of HIV. They shared the Prize with Harald zur Hausen, who discovered that the human papilloma viruses can cause cervical cancer. Montagnier was also the co-founder of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention and co-directs the Program for International Viral Collaboration.
Montagnier delivered the Beatty Lecture on November 17, 1998, titled “AIDS on the Threshold of the Year 2000: Merging Western Experiences and African Realities”.
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