Luc Montagnier (born 1932 in Chabris, France) is a French virologist. In 1982 he was asked for assistance with establishing the possible underlying retroviral cause of a mysterious new syndrome, AIDS, by Dr. Willy Rozenbaum, a clinician at the Hôpital Bichat hospital in Paris. Rozenbaum's role was vital, as he had been openly speculating at scientific meetings that the cause of the disease might be a retrovirus, and it was from a lymph node biopsy taken from one of Rozenbaum's patients that the breakthrough was to come. Image File history File links LucMontan. ... Year 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... Virology, often considered a part of microbiology or of pathology, is the study of organic viruses: their structure and classification, their ways to infect and exploit cells to reproduce and cause disease, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their potential uses in research and therapy. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In medicine, the term syndrome is the association of several clinically recognizable features, signs, symptoms, phenomena or characteristics which often occur together, so that the presence of one feature alerts the physician to the presence of the others. ... This article is about the syndrome. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... Genera Alpharetrovirus Betaretrovirus Gammaretrovirus Deltaretrovirus Epsilonretrovirus Lentivirus Spumavirus A retrovirus is any virus belonging to the viral family Retroviridae. ... Lymph nodes are components of the lymphatic system. ... A biopsy (in Greek: bios = life and opsy = look/appearance) is a medical test involving the removal of cells or tissues for examination. ...

By 1983, this group of scientists and doctors, led by this time by the aforementioned Montagnier discovered the causative virus (Barré-Sinoussi et al., 1983). They gave it the name lymphadenopathy-associated virus, or LAV. A year later a team led by Dr. Robert Gallo of the United States confirmed the discovery of the virus, but they renamed it human T lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III) (Popovic et al., 1984). 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Dr. Robert C. Gallo Robert Charles Gallo (born March 23, 1937) is a U.S. biomedical researcher. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Montagnier's research was conducted at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The identity of the first group to isolate HIV (which is generally accepted by the mainstream medical and scientific communities to be the underlying cause of AIDS) was for many years the subject of an acrimonious disputed between the French, represented by Dr. Montagnier, and American Dr. Robert Gallo. This is because the striking similarity between the first two human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) isolates Lai/LAV (formerly LAV, isolated at the Pasteur Institute) and Lai/IIIB (formerly HTLV-IIIB, reported to be isolated from a pooled culture at the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute) provoked considerable controversy in light of the high level of variability found among subsequent HIV-1 isolates. Since then, there has been considerable and often acrimonious controversy over the priority for the discovery of HIV, including accusations that Gallo improperly used a sample of HIV produced at the Institut Pasteur. In November 1990, the Office of Scientific Integrity at the National Institutes of Health commissioned a group at Roche to analyse archival samples established at the Pasteur Institute and the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute between 1983 and 1985. They concluded that the origin of the HIV-1 Lai/IIIB isolate discovered by Robert Gallo was the same as that discovered by Montagnier. The two scientists continued to dispute each other's claims until 1987, and it was not until President Mitterrand of France and President Reagan of the USA met that the major issues were ironed out. The scientific protagonists finally agreed to share credit for the discovery of HIV, and in 1986, both the French and the US names (LAV and HTLV-III) were dropped in favour of the new term human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (Coffin, 1986). The Pasteur Institute (French: Institut Pasteur) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, microorganisms, diseases and vaccines. ... The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for medical research. ... Roche is French for boulder. The word is (part of) several names: // Business & companies Hoffmann-La Roche, also known as Roche, is a Swiss pharmaceutical company that owns the patent on Tamiflu®. Places in France Roche or Roches is the name or part of the name of several communes in...   IPA: (October 26, 1916 – January 8, 1996) was President of France from 1981 to 1995, elected as representative of the Socialist Party (PS). ... Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). ...

Luc Montagnier is the co-founder of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention and co directs the Program for International Viral Collaboration. He has received more than 20 major awards, including the Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur, the Lasker Prize, and the Gairdner Prize.

Quotes

- Luc Montagnier^{[citation needed]}

See also

• [Website] Photographs of the real people from Randy Shilts' history of the AIDS crisis "And the Band Played On"

• HIV trial in Libya
• The discovery of the AIDS virus in 1983. Official position of the Pasteur Institute (in French).