Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Born in Paris on 30 July 1947, Barré-Sinoussi trained as a virologist at the Institut Pasteur, where she would spend her career. Working under Luc Montagnier, she performed the fundamental research that identified the human immunodeficiency virus as the cause of AIDS — work that unraveled one of the late twentieth century's defining medical mysteries. The discovery earned her and Montagnier the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008. She rose to Director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Division and Professor at Pasteur, retiring from active research in August 2015 and fully b…