Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the AIDS virus, died Tuesday at the age of 89 at the American hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, the mayor of the city Jean-Christophe Fromantin announced on Thursday.
The French researcher, who later became a controversial figure in the scientific community, received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008 for having, in 1983, identified the AIDS virus with his associates, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann.
The biologist will forever be associated with this discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) responsible for AIDS.
But his aura had tarnished in recent years after several positions that had raised fierce controversy and earned him condemnation from his peers.
After repeated declarations since 2017 against vaccines, he had been talking about him again for the past two years with hypotheses on the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic refuted by the scientific community.
His controversial comments against anti-COVID vaccines had won him the sympathy of antivax.