Beatrice Hahn

Beatrice H. Hahn (born February 13, 1955) is an American virologist and biomedical researcher best known for work which established that HIV, the virus causing AIDS, began as a virus passed from apes to humans. She is a professor of Medicine and Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In November 2002, ''Discover'' magazine listed Hahn as one of the 50 most important women scientists.

Hahn discovered that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) originated in other primates and spilled over to humans. Hahn and her research group established that wild-living chimpanzees in southern Cameroon were a natural reservoir of the closely related simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs). The team developed non-invasive techniques for gathering genetic data. By making comparisons between the genes of HIV-1 and SIVs, they found that SIVs had originated in apes, and had passed to humans through multiple connections. The simian versions of the virus (known as SIVcpz in chimpanzees, and SIVgor in gorillas) became the infection named HIV in humans.

Hahn later determined that the malaria parasite also traversed from other primates to humans, in a single event. Provided by Wikipedia