Harald zur Hausen has died at the age of 87. The cancer researcher had been working since the seventies to prove that certain sexually transmitted skin wart viruses can cause cervical cancer. His findings created the conditions for the development of a broadly used vaccine against cervical cancer and other tumors, which has been approved on the European market since 2006. In 2008, he received half of the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work. The other went to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for the discovery of the HIV virus.