They changed history and the world often without recogntiion
They changed history and the world often without recogntiion
The woman who discovered HIV
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist and director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Division at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1983. After receiving her PhD in 1975 she focused on a particular group of viruses, retroviruses. Retroviruses are viruses whose genomes consist of RNA and whose genes can be incorporated into host cells' DNA. Her knowledge in the area led to the identification if HIV as the cause of AIDS. She won the Nobel Prize in 2008 in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery. Her work has been fundamental in radically improving treatment for AIDS patients.