Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Is Awarded To Svante Paabo 10
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Svante Paabo on Monday for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution. From a report: It was the first of several prizes to be given over the next week. The Nobel Prizes, among the highest honors in science, recognize groundbreaking contributions in a variety of fields. "Through his pioneering research, Svante Paabo -- this year's Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine -- accomplished something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans," the Nobel committee said in a statement. "Paabo's discoveries have generated new understanding of our evolutionary history," the statement said, adding that this research had helped establish the burgeoning science of "paleogenomics," or the study of genetic material from ancient pathogens.
Nils-Goran Larsson, a professor in medical biochemistry for the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, said that Dr. Paabo had used existing technology and his own methods to extract and analyze the ancient DNA. "It was certainly considered to be impossible to recover DNA from 40,000-year-old bones," Dr. Larsson said, adding later that the discoveries would "allow us to compare changes between contemporary Homo sapiens and ancient hominins. And this, over the years to come, will give us huge insights into human physiology."
Nils-Goran Larsson, a professor in medical biochemistry for the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, said that Dr. Paabo had used existing technology and his own methods to extract and analyze the ancient DNA. "It was certainly considered to be impossible to recover DNA from 40,000-year-old bones," Dr. Larsson said, adding later that the discoveries would "allow us to compare changes between contemporary Homo sapiens and ancient hominins. And this, over the years to come, will give us huge insights into human physiology."
non-paywalled links (Score:4, Informative)
Nobel Press Release [nobelprize.org] (arguably the only link you need)
Reuters Story [reuters.com] (probably the only other link you want)
some other toss-ins:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/scienc... [www.cbc.ca]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/03... [npr.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Paywall bypass for the linked nytimes.com article - https://archive.ph/K0zWL [archive.ph]
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks for delivering the nobel prize conflation with nobel peace prize troll, it's not a nobel discussion without it
Svante Pääbo, PÄÄBO (Score:5, Interesting)
His real surname is Pääbo.
Svante Pääbo.
His mother - Karin Pääbo - is an Estonian. She escaped Estonia at the end of WWII, fleeing from the incoming Russian occupation. It was well known that Stalin had wiped out Russian intelligentsia before the war, thus all scientists, engineers, doctors etc from Eastern Europe tried to escape from new Soviet occupation by any means possible. Many Estonians crossed the Baltic sea on small vehicles and ended up as refugees in Sweden. There are also sizeable Estonian WWII expat societies in USA, Canada, Australia etc.
Estonian alphabet and names contain many umlauts, as the society was run by German-speaking overlords since 1300 till 1900 or so. Thus - Pääbo, PÄÄBO, not Paabo.
My own grandfather escaped Estonia in the WWII aftermath, ended up in USA, and worked for NASA subcontractors for his entire life, hiding his "nearly Russian" connections and origin. We only heard about his survival and life when the Cold War had ended. The Estonian war refugees were the most educated, active and hard-working part of the society before the forced escape, thus most of them also did very well in their new homelands and societies.
Kudos, Svante :)
The surprise, if there is one ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Political Nobel (Score:2)
This guy's work, no matter how great, was not in medicine or physiology. It was in anthropology. There is no Nobel for anthropology. Probably the Swedish Nobel committee decided it was time for a Swede to get the prize.