French virologist Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, passed away at the age of 89, French media reported Thursday.

Montagnier died Tuesday evening at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a western suburb of the capital Paris, but his death was confirmed Thursday, said the French dailyLe Parisien.

Montagnier, who shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008 due to his co-discovery with his colleague Françoise Barré-Sinoussi of HIV, was gradually marginalized within the scientific community in the last 10 years for his increasingly outlandish theories, the daily noted.

In 2017, Montagnier positioned himself against vaccination, estimating in 2017 without evidence that there was a risk with certain vaccines “of gradually poisoning the entire population.”

More recently, he made particularly decried remarks on the COVID virus, which he claimed was the result of human manipulation. (Anadolu Agency)