Barré-Sinoussi, Françoise, 1947–, French virologist, Ph.D. Pasteur Institute, Paris, 1974. She has been a professor at the Pasteur Institute since 1974 and was appointed head of its retroviral unit in 1992. Barré-Sinoussi was a co-recipient, with Harald zur Hausen and Luc Montagnier, of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She and Montagnier are credited with discovering (1983) the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. She has continued to conduct HIV research at the Pasteur Institute while also collaborating with resource-limited countries in Asia and Africa, and has played a significant role in linking basic and clinical AIDS research, thereby enabling improvements in the prevention and treatment of the disease.
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