At the age of 79, virologist Ivan Hirsch has passed away

It is with deep sorrow that we received the news that on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, Prof. RNDr. Ivan Hirsch, CSc. (born 1946), a member of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic, passed away at the age of 79.

He studied the mechanisms of chronic and latent infections caused by HIV and hepatitis B and C viruses. He became widely known to the general public, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he explained in the media how the virus behaves and how to protect against it. He was an active member of the Snow Initiative (Iniciativa Sníh), which brought together prominent Czech scientists and physicians collaborating, among other things, to mitigate the impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Ivan Hirsch studied virology at the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague. From 1972, he worked at the Institute of Sera and Vaccines (ÚSOL). Between 1989 and 2013, he was based in France at INSERM (the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research), first in the Laboratory of Retroviruses and Associated Diseases, then in the Laboratory of Pathogenesis of Lentiviral Infections, and later at the Cancer Research Center. From 1992 to 2013, he served as a Research Director at INSERM. In 2006, he was a visiting scientist at the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biophysics, NCI CDH, at the NIH in Bethesda, USA.

After returning to the Czech Republic, he worked at the Department of Genetics and Microbiology of the Faculty of Science, Charles University (which he headed until 2019), and at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences.