Paris - French virologists Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine, will always be associated with the discovery of the retrovirus that causes AIDS.
In 1982, Montagnier headed a team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, of which Barre-Sinoussi was a member, that was asked for assistance in establishing the possible viral cause of a mysterious new syndrome, AIDS.