Françoise Barre-Sinoussi was part of the team that discovered HIV in 1983. At the time (and for the majority of her career) she worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris as a virologist. It was through measuring the reverse transcriptase levels in the biopsied lymph nodes of a patient with HIV that she was able to confirm many researchers’ suspicions that the virus responsible for AIDS was a retro virus. It wasn’t either of the two retroviruses that had been identified in humans up to that point, however. It was an entirely new virus.
There are two (ok --- a million) things that I think are really cool about Françoise The first is that it was only through her extreme persistence that she got the training necessary to become one of the world’s best virologists. As a medical student, she realized it was important to her to not only become a clinician, but also a capable researcher. In an interview with Guardian Australia, she said:
“Very rapidly while at university, as a young student at the time, I realised I was motivated by science, by biomedical science, without really knowing what that meant. So after two years at university I said to myself, ‘I can’t study at university without knowing what it means to be a researcher, to understand science,’ and so I began looking for a lab that would accept me at the same time while I studied.
“It was very difficult. Research labs were not used to this kind of approach by a student. I was odd.”
There are two (ok --- a million) things that I think are really cool about Françoise The first is that it was only through her extreme persistence that she got the training necessary to become one of the world’s best virologists. As a medical student, she realized it was important to her to not only become a clinician, but also a capable researcher. In an interview with Guardian Australia, she said:
“Very rapidly while at university, as a young student at the time, I realised I was motivated by science, by biomedical science, without really knowing what that meant. So after two years at university I said to myself, ‘I can’t study at university without knowing what it means to be a researcher, to understand science,’ and so I began looking for a lab that would accept me at the same time while I studied.
“It was very difficult. Research labs were not used to this kind of approach by a student. I was odd.”
I was odd."
The second awesome thing about Françoise is that she is extremely dedicated to empowering the next generation of scientists.
“Do you think today I am ever a principal investigator on a project or research?” she said.
“No way! I have younger, senior, principal investigators in my lab. They are capable.”
“Do you think today I am ever a principal investigator on a project or research?” she said.
“No way! I have younger, senior, principal investigators in my lab. They are capable.”
Source: Academy of Medical Sciences
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Source: Jonas Lindkvist
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Sources (check them out for more cool things about Françoise and HIV!): http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/25/francoise-barre-sinoussi-on-the-history-and-future-of-hiv-research
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp038194
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp038194