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Dr. Montagnier has been an active researcher in oncology and virology for almost four decades. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's he focused on RNA tumor viruses and did extensive work on interferon in both animal and human systems. In 1983, as head of the Viral Oncology Unit at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, he and his colleagues discovered the human retrovirus, which later became known as HIV-1, the etiologic agent of AIDS. In 1985, his team isolated the second human AIDS virus, HIV-2. Since then, he has coordinated the work of a distinguished group of collaborators on the mechanisms of AIDS pathogenesis. Today Dr. Montagnier heads the "Aids and Retrovirus" department at the Pasteur Institute, is Chairman of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, which he co-founded in 1993, and holds the position of Distinguished Professor at Queens College in New York. | 