Stockholm — This year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo for his discoveries about human evolution.
Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Committee, won Monday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
Paabo, 67, led studies that compared the genomes of modern humans and our closest extinct relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, and it appeared there was a combination between the species.
“By revealing the genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, their findings provide the basis for exploring what makes us unique humans,” the Nobel committee said.
“This ancient gene for humans today has physiological relevance today, affecting, for example, how our immune formula responds to infections,” the panel said.
The Medicine Prize introduced a week of Nobel Prize announcements. It continues on Tuesday with the physics prize, on Wednesday with the chemistry prize and on Thursday with the literature prize. On Friday, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize and the Economics Prize on October 10 will be announced.
Last year’s winners David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries about how the human body perceives temperature and touch.
The prizes come with a prize in coins of SEK 10 million (almost $900,000) and will be awarded on December 10. The coins come from a legacy left by the prize’s author, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.