Luc Montagnier, Nobel laureate in medicine for the discovery of the AIDS virus, died on Tuesday at the age of 89 in a hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, the city’s mayor, Jean-Christophe Fromantin, announced on Thursday.
The French researcher, who later became a controversial figure in the scientific community, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008 for having identified the AIDS virus in 1983 together with his colleagues Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann. .
The biologist will remain associated in history with the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS.
However, his aura has been tarnished in recent years following several statements that sparked enormous controversy and led him to be rejected by his colleagues.
Since 2017 he has made repeated statements once morest vaccines and in the last two years he has reappeared making statements regarding the coronavirus, responsible for the covid-19 pandemic, which were refuted by the scientific community.
His statements regarding anticovid vaccines made him win the sympathy of the anti-vaccine movements.
