Luc Montagnier

Luc Montagnier (18 August 1932 in Chabris - 8 February 2022 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French virologist and researcher. He completed his doctorate in Medicine at the University of Poitiers and in 1967 began his research in virology. In 1972 he was appointed head of the Viral Oncology Unit of the Pasteur Institute, and in 1974 he was also appointed director of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, in French). In 2008 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, together with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, for the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS; said award was shared with Harald zur Hausen, who was awarded for the discovery of human papillomaviruses that cause cervical cancer.

Main contributions

In 1983 the team of which he is a part described and identified what would be one of the greatest discoveries of the last decades of the XX century: The HIV virus that causes AIDS, just shortly after this syndrome was recognized as a new pathological entity, in 1981. The virus was initially called lymphomadenopathy-associated virus (LAV). A year later, the team led by the American Robert Gallo confirmed the discovery of the virus and that it was the cause of AIDS. The virus was renamed T-lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III).

For many years there was a strong dispute about whether the first to isolate the virus was Montagnier or Gallo. In November 1990, the Office of Scientific Integrity of the National Institutes of Health attempted to clarify the matter by appointing a commission to analyze samples stored at the Institut Pasteur and the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology of the National Cancer Institute between 1983 and 1983. and 1985. The group, led by Sheng-Yung Chang, concluded that Gallo's virus came from Montagnier's laboratory. Chang concluded that the French group's virus had contaminated a crop from which Montagnier's group had sent a sample to Gallo, and in turn contaminated the crops Gallo was working on.

Today it is recognized that Montagnier's group was the first to isolate the HIV virus, but that Gallo's group was the one that demonstrated that the virus causes AIDS and was responsible for much of the scientific development that it did discovery possible, including a technique previously developed by Gallo for culturing T cells in the laboratory.

In the November 29, 2002 issue of Science, Gallo and Montagnier published a series of articles, one of them signed by both, in which they recognized the fundamental contributions that each had made in the discovery of HIV.

Awards

He was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research, shared with Robert Gallo, in 2000 and the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008 shared with Harald zur Hausen and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi.

Controversy

In recent years, the prestige of this French scientist has been overshadowed by questioning the safety of vaccines, as well as by expressing his support for homeopathy. In addition, the publication of an article in which Montagnier claims to have detected electromagnetic signals from dilute solutions of bacterial and viral DNA.