FILE- In this April 14, 1986, file photo, former Vice President Walter Mondale and his wife Joan Mondale, far right, present Arthur and Mathilde Krim, center with plaque, a photo of former President John F. Kennedy with wife Jackie and Arthur Krim during a dinner reception honoring Krim at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Krim, a prominent AIDS researcher who galvanized worldwide support in the early fight against the deadly disease, died Monday, Jan. 15, 2018. She was 91. (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine, File)
Republished January 16, 2018 - 7:15 PM
Original Publication Date January 16, 2018 - 6:11 PM
NEW YORK - Mathilde Krim, a prominent AIDS researcher who galvanized worldwide support in the early fight against the deadly disease, has died. She was 91.
Krim was founding chairman of The Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR. The non-profit says she died at her home in King's Point, New York, on Monday.
amfAR Chief Executive Officer Kevin Robert Frost says in a statement "so many people alive today literally owe their lives" to her.
Krim was a geneticist with experience in cancer research when AIDS first surfaced in the early 1980s. Over the next several decades, she mobilized a vast army of celebrities and others to help raise money and to lessen the disease's stigma.
In 2000, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the U.S.
News from © The Associated Press, 2018