Nobel Medicine Prize awarded to Svante Paabo for discoveries on human evolution
- Nobel winners are announced between October 3 and 10, starting with medicine
- Launched 121 years ago, the awards were created by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel
Scientist Svante Paabo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries “concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”, the award-giving body said on Monday.
The prize, arguably among the most prestigious in the scientific world, is awarded by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns (US$900,357).
It is the first of this year’s batch of prizes.
“He was overwhelmed, he was speechless. Very happy,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary for the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, who called Paabo with the news.
“He asked if he could tell anyone and asked if he could tell his wife and I said that was okay. He was incredibly thrilled about this award.”
Paabo, son of the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Sune Bergström, has been credited with transforming the study of human origins after developing approaches to allow for the examination of DNA sequences from archaeological and paleontological remains.