Svante Pääbo – Winner of the Körber European Science Prize 2018

The Swedish physician Svante Pääbo has been honoured for his pioneering achievements in the field of palaeogenetics, of which he is considered to be the founder. One of Pääbo's most important scientific breakthroughs is the decoding of the Neanderthal genome. It has been significantly conducive to the realisation that Neanderthals and other extinct human groups have contributed to the ancestry of present-day humans. Svante Pääbo has been awarded the Körber European Science Prize 2018 for these groundbreaking findings.