Tale of how French experts became the first to discover HIV virus

Professors Jean-Claude Chermann (L) and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who participated in the discovery of the virus that causes Aids, in the laboratory of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. © AFP - MICHEL CLEMENT

Forty years ago this week researchers in Paris published the world’s first description of the virus that causes Aids. RFI looks back at a scientific milestone that paved the way for testing – and ultimately controlling – HIV.

In December 1982, 29 patients in France had been found with signs of the new disease that newspapers were calling “gay syndrome”.