Prince of Asturias Awards
Technical & Scientific Research 2000
Luc Montagnier, Professor Emeritus at the Pasteur Institute (Paris) and Robert C. Gallo, Director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland (USA), are considered the discoverers of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
According to the report from UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS), it is estimated that at the end of 2009, 33.3 million people were infected with HIV and 1.8 million people died of AIDS-related diseases.
Luc Montagnier (Chabris, France, 1932) graduated as a Doctor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Poitiers (Paris), where he subsequently began lecturing in 1955. In 1967, he was appointed Head of Research and, in 1975, Director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. He also directed the Viral Oncology Unit at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He spent three years doing research in England into the mechanisms of RNA virus replication and, on his return to France, began studying retroviruses, in particular the Rous sarcoma virus, at the Curie Institute. In 1983, he discovered the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome virus, for which work he is considered the joint discoverer, along with Robert C. Gallo, of HIV (the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the original cause of AIDS).
He currently chairs the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, a non-governmental organisation under the auspices of UNESCO whose main objective is the establishment of a worldwide network of HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention Centres aimed at fostering international cooperation and facilitating the transfer of knowledge. He has worked as a researcher at Queens College in New York. His research focuses on the mechanisms via which HIV induces a decrease in CD4 lymphocytes, the regulation of the dormant virus and the study of encephalopathies caused by this virus. He is the author of numerous publications and has lectured throughout the world.
Knight of the French Legion of Honour, he has received awards such as the Rosen Oncology Award (1971), the Japan Foundation Prize in Science and Technology (1988), the King Faisal International Prize (1993) and has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Havana (Cuba). He received the Nobel Prize in 2008, along with Harald zur Hausen and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, for his discovery of HIV.
Robert C. Gallo (Connecticut, USA, 1937) studied Medicine at the American universities of Jefferson, Philadelphia and Yale. He is a Doctor of Medicine and was an intern and resident at the University of Chicago from 1963 to 1965. He then joined the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at Bethesda (Maryland, USA), where he attained the rank of researcher in 1969, first heading the Cellular Control Mechanisms Unit between 1969 and 1972, and then the Laboratory of Tumour Cell Biology. He has been Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland since 1995, where he directs the Institute of Human Virology and collaborates with the Cancer Center. He has authored more than a thousand publications.
His research has led to the discovery of the T-Cell, and the discovery and description of the first human retrovirus. He contributed to designing the first analysis to determine the presence of the AIDS virus in blood. With twenty-five years of dedication to science to his credit, he continues carrying out important scientific research which has earned him the recognition of the international community.
Honorary professor at several universities, including those of Rochester and Ohio (USA) and the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), he has received, among other honours, the General Motors Award (1984) and Armand Hammer Award (1985) for Cancer Research, the Lasker Basic Medical (1982) and Clinical Medical (1986) Research Awards and the Gairdner Foundation Award. He was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005.
