France’s Nobel winner for co-discovery of HIV virus dies: mayor

PARIS: French scientist Luc Montagnier, who won the Nobel prize for medicine for his co-discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS, has died aged 89, the mayor of the Paris suburb where he was hospitalised told AFP on Thursday.

Montagnier died on Tuesday in the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine northwest of the centre of Paris, its mayor Jean-Christophe Fromantin said, confirming reports in the Francesoir and Liberation newspapers.

Fromantin said he was in possession of the death certificate. Montagnier shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with his colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their "discovery of human immunodeficiency virus" (HIV), which causes AIDS.

But he was sidelined by the scientific community in later years as he took up increasingly outlandish positions, notably against vaccines. His pariah status only increased during the Covid-19 pandemic when he claimed the virus was laboratory-made and that vaccines were responsible for the appearance of variants.