Lise Thiry (5 February 1921 – 16 January 2024) was a Belgian scientist and politician. She has been voted one of the top 100 Belgians on a television show on the Belgian French-speaking public channel

RTBF The ("Belgian Radio-television of the French Community"), shortened to RTBF (branded as rtbf.be), is a public broadcasting, public service broadcaster for the French Community of Belgium, French-speaking Community of Belgium. Its counterpart i ...

Early life and education

Lise Thiry was born in 1921 on 5 February in

Liège Liège ( ; ; ; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the Liège Province, province of Liège, Belgium. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east o ...

. Her father was

Marcel Thiry Marcel Thiry (13 March 1897 – 5 September 1977) was a French-speaking Belgian poet. During World War I, he and his brother Oscar served in the Belgian Expeditionary Corps in Russia. He was awarded the Prix Valery Larbaud in 1976 for '' Toi q ...

, who was a leading French poet. She was one of three female students, in 1940, who studied medicine at the

University of Liège The University of Liège (), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium founded in 1817 and based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French (language), French. History The university was foun ...

. She graduated in 1946.

Career and research

Thiry went on to research at the

Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute (, ) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. Th ...

in Brussels. In 1951, she created a virology department. She developed a method of screening the AIDS virus (

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the im ...

).Lise Thiry
AIDS on stamps, Retrieved 3 November 2015 In 1990, she became a senator. In 2002, whilst championing the rights of asylum seekers she wrote ''Conversations with the Clandestine Ones''. Thiry

turned 100 A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100. Because life expectancies at birth worldwide are well below 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. The United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarian ...

in February 2021, and died on 16 January 2024, at the age of 102.

Awards and honours

* In 1990, she was voted "Woman of the Year". * In 2007, a 70 cent stamp featuring Thiry and the AIDS virus was created. * In 2001, she was given the Walloon Merit at the rank of Commander.

References

External links

Lise Thiry
BNF.fr {{DEFAULTSORT:Thiry, Lise 1921 births 2024 deaths Belgian women biologists 20th-century Belgian scientists 20th-century Belgian biologists 20th-century women scientists Belgian medical writers Belgian virologists Belgian women in politics Belgian women physicians Physicians from Liège Women virologists Belgian women centenarians Politicians from Liège