Svante Pääbo

Svante Pääbo, who received his doctorate from Uppsala University in 1986, has been awarded 2022 year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discoveries concerning the genome of extinct hominins and human evolution”.

As explained by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, “Through his pioneering research, Svante Pääbo achieved something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans. He also made the sensational discovery of a previously unknown hominin, Denisova.” Furthermore, Pääbo made the important discovery that cross-breeding occurred between Homo sapiens and our extinct relatives after the migration out of Africa some 70,000 years ago. The gene transfers from extinct hominins that have left traces among present-day humans outside Africa have proven physiologically significant, for example, for human resistance to infections.

Svante Pääbo has returned several times to the University as visiting professor and has also been a member of the University Board.

In 2023, Svante Pääbo was named Alumnus of the Year at Uppsala University. As part of the award ceremony, he was celebrated by having a cycle path named in his honour. This path, known as the Pääbo Route, is around 8 kilometres long and runs between Ekonomikum and the Ångström Laboratory, linking nine different campuses at Uppsala University.