Building on lymph node samples from an AIDS patient, virologists at the Pasteur Institute detected reverse transcriptase activity indicating a retrovirus, which they named lymphadenopathy-associated virus. The discovery, later confirmed as HIV, opened the path to blood tests, antiretroviral drugs, and a scientific understanding of a disease that had baffled clinicians since 1981.
The sample came from a French fashion designer suffering from swollen lymph nodes, a case that led researchers led by Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier to isolate a virus unlike any cataloged before, one that attacked the immune system's T-cells with methodical precision.
The finding ignited one of modern science's fiercest priority disputes, as American researcher Robert Gallo simultaneously claimed to have identified the causative agent, calling it HTLV-III. Years of transatlantic acrimony over credit and patent rights for the HIV blood test eventually ended with a 1987 agreement brokered at the presidential level between France and the United States.
Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for the discovery, though the exact publication dates and credit remain debated by historians of science. What is beyond dispute is that identifying the virus transformed AIDS from a mysterious, unnamed plague into a target for diagnostic tests and, eventually, life-saving therapies.
Key people: Luc Montagnier, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi