the Nobel Prizes 2022 for medicine or physiology was awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo on Monday. Svante Pääbo was given the award “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution,” the Nobel Prize committee said.Considered the most prestigious prize in the scientific world, it is awarded by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($900,357).
Announcing the award, the Nobel Prize committee said, “Through his pioneering research, Svante Pääbo accomplished 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.”
Svante Pääbo’s research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline; paleogenomics. By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human,” the statement added.
The award also comes at a time when the Covid pandemic placed the medical research at centre stage. The announcement will be followed by Nobel Prizes for physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on October 10.
