Svante Paabo, a Swedish scientist, has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discoveries on human evolution. The winner was announced Monday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, by Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Committee.
According to the announcement, Paabo has led research comparing the genomes of modern humans and our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, demonstrating that there was interspecies mixing.