Professor Luc Montagnier, 89, died Tuesday evening, learned our colleagues from Liberation this Thursday.
Information confirmed to Parisian by the town hall of Neuilly, which mentions his death certificate.
This retired scientist, a former member of the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS, was recognized by a Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008 for the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi.
Since the end of the 2000s, he had multiplied the controversial positions that gradually marginalized him from the scientific community.
The biologist had defended theories on the emission of electromagnetic waves by DNA or even assured that antibiotics could be used to treat autism.
Very decried remarks on the Covid
Luc Montagnier had again positioned himself against vaccination, estimating in 2017 and this, without evidence, that there was a risk with certain vaccines “of gradually poisoning the entire population”.
Read alsoCoronavirus and HIV: why Professor Luc Montagnier's theory is implausible
More recently, he had made particularly decried remarks on the Covid virus, which he accused of being the result of human manipulation.
He had further argued that SARS-CoV-2 contained “sequences of the AIDS virus”, a position which had been criticized at length by his peers.
The news of his death had been announced yesterday by France Soir, but no other source than that of this media had confirmed his death.
Liberation obtained this Thursday confirmation of his death from Dr. Béatrice Milbert (with whom there had been talk of him organizing a symposium in Geneva in January 2021) and from the town hall of Neuilly, which also confirmed to the Parisian the filing of the death certificate.