Svante Paabo

Svante Pääbo
Born	20 4, 1955
Birthplace	Stockholm, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Occupation	Geneticist, evolutionary biologist
Title	Director, Department of Genetics
Employer	Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Known for	Founding the field of paleogenetics, sequencing the Neanderthal genome
Education	PhD, Uppsala University
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2022), Japan Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

Svante Pääbo (born 20 April 1955) is a Swedish geneticist and evolutionary biologist who is recognized as the founder of the field of paleogenetics — the study of ancient DNA recovered from archaeological and paleontological specimens. Through decades of meticulous laboratory work, Pääbo demonstrated that DNA could be extracted from human fossils thousands of years old, a breakthrough that transformed the understanding of human evolution and the relationships between modern humans and their archaic relatives. His team was the first to sequence the Neanderthal genome, revealing that interbreeding had occurred between Neanderthals and the ancestors of present-day humans, meaning that a small but significant percentage of Neanderthal DNA persists in many living people today. For these contributions, Pääbo was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He serves as director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, where he has conducted the majority of his landmark research.

Early Life

Svante Pääbo was born on 20 April 1955 in Stockholm, Sweden. His father was Sune Bergström, a Swedish biochemist who himself was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 for discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related substances. Pääbo's mother, Karin Pääbo, was an Estonian chemist, and Svante took her surname. The family's Estonian heritage remained an important part of Pääbo's identity; during a visit to Estonia in December 2025, the geneticist reflected publicly on his family's ties to the country and praised Estonia's scientific achievements.

Growing up in Stockholm, Pääbo developed an early fascination with history and archaeology. As a young student, he was drawn to ancient Egypt, and this interest in the distant past would later converge with his scientific training in molecular biology. The intersection of these two passions — a curiosity about ancient civilizations and a rigorous grounding in genetics — set the stage for the revolutionary career that followed.

Education

Pääbo pursued his higher education in Sweden. He studied Egyptology before turning to medicine and ultimately to molecular biology. He earned his PhD from Uppsala University, where he conducted early experiments attempting to extract DNA from ancient specimens, including Egyptian mummies. These doctoral experiments, conducted in the early 1980s, were among the first demonstrations that genetic material could survive in biological remains for thousands of years. This work attracted international attention and laid the intellectual and methodological foundation for the discipline that would become known as paleogenetics.

After completing his doctorate, Pääbo conducted postdoctoral research in the United States, further refining the techniques needed to recover and analyze degraded ancient DNA. His training combined expertise in molecular biology, biochemistry, and evolutionary biology, equipping him with the interdisciplinary toolkit necessary to tackle the technical challenges inherent in working with ancient genetic material.

Career

Founding Paleogenetics

Pääbo's career has been defined by the creation and development of an entirely new scientific discipline. Paleogenetics — the recovery and analysis of DNA from ancient biological specimens — was, before Pääbo's work, considered by many researchers to be technically impossible. Ancient DNA degrades over time, breaking into small fragments and becoming contaminated with microbial DNA and DNA from modern humans who handle the specimens. Pääbo pioneered methods to overcome these challenges, developing stringent protocols for extracting, amplifying, and sequencing ancient genetic material while minimizing contamination.

His early work with Egyptian mummies in the 1980s demonstrated that DNA could persist in specimens thousands of years old. Over the following decades, Pääbo and his team steadily pushed back the temporal boundaries of ancient DNA research, developing increasingly sophisticated techniques that allowed the recovery of genetic material from ever-older specimens. This work required not only advances in laboratory protocols but also close collaboration with archaeologists and paleontologists who could provide well-preserved samples and contextual information about the specimens being studied.

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

In 1997, Pääbo was appointed as one of the founding directors of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, where he established and led the Department of Genetics. The institute provided him with the resources and collaborative environment necessary to pursue his most ambitious projects. Under his leadership, the genetics department became the preeminent center for ancient DNA research worldwide, attracting leading researchers and graduate students from across the globe.

At Leipzig, Pääbo assembled the team and infrastructure that would make the sequencing of archaic human genomes possible. The work required the development of new computational methods to assemble fragmented ancient DNA sequences, as well as techniques to distinguish genuine ancient sequences from contamination. The institute's state-of-the-art clean-room facilities, designed specifically for ancient DNA work, became a model for laboratories around the world.

Sequencing the Neanderthal Genome

The crowning achievement of Pääbo's career came in 2010 with the publication of the first draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, an accomplishment that the Nobel Committee later described as "seemingly impossible." The project required the extraction and sequencing of DNA from Neanderthal bone fragments tens of thousands of years old, overcoming formidable technical obstacles related to DNA degradation and contamination.

The Neanderthal genome sequence yielded a finding that reshaped the understanding of human evolution: evidence that interbreeding had occurred between Neanderthals and the ancestors of present-day humans of non-African descent. The genomic data showed that approximately 1–4% of the genome of modern Europeans and Asians is derived from Neanderthals, indicating that these archaic humans did not simply disappear but left a lasting genetic legacy in living populations.

This discovery overturned decades of debate in paleoanthropology about the nature of the relationship between modern humans and Neanderthals. While fossil evidence had long suggested that the two groups coexisted in Europe and the Near East, the question of whether they interbred had been unresolvable through skeletal analysis alone. Pääbo's genomic evidence provided a definitive answer, demonstrating that gene flow between the two groups had indeed occurred.

Pääbo has discussed the implications of these findings in numerous public lectures, including a December 2025 lecture at the University of Tartu titled "About Neandertals, and how they live on in many of us," in which he explored the ways in which Neanderthal genetic contributions continue to influence the biology of modern humans.

Discovery of the Denisovans

In addition to the Neanderthal genome, Pääbo and his team made another groundbreaking discovery: the identification of an entirely new group of archaic humans known as the Denisovans. In 2010, Pääbo's laboratory extracted DNA from a tiny finger bone fragment found in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Genomic analysis revealed that the bone belonged to a previously unknown hominin group that was genetically distinct from both modern humans and Neanderthals.

The discovery of the Denisovans was remarkable because it represented the first time a new hominin group had been identified primarily through genetic rather than morphological evidence. The fragmentary nature of the fossil record had left the Denisovans invisible to traditional paleontology; only through ancient DNA analysis was their existence revealed. Subsequent research showed that, like Neanderthals, Denisovans had interbred with the ancestors of some modern human populations, particularly those in Southeast Asia and Oceania, where Denisovan DNA contributions can be detected at levels of up to approximately 6%.

Understanding Human Uniqueness

Beyond documenting the relationships between modern humans and their archaic relatives, Pääbo's research has sought to identify the genetic changes that distinguish modern humans from Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other archaic hominins. By comparing the genomes of these groups, researchers in Pääbo's laboratory have identified specific genetic variants that are unique to modern humans and that may have conferred evolutionary advantages related to brain development, immune function, and other biological processes.

The Nobel Committee noted that Pääbo's discoveries "provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human" and have opened new avenues of research into the functional significance of archaic DNA in modern human biology. Some Neanderthal genetic variants that persist in modern populations have been associated with susceptibility to certain diseases, immune response variation, and other phenotypic traits, making Pääbo's work relevant not only to evolutionary biology but also to medical research.

Views on Neanderthal Extinction

In a 2025 interview with EL PAÍS, Pääbo discussed his perspective on the extinction of the Neanderthals, stating: "The reason for the Neanderthals' extinction lies in how numerous we've become." He suggested that the demographic expansion of modern human populations, rather than any single catastrophic event, was the primary factor in the disappearance of Neanderthals from the archaeological record. According to Pääbo, the sheer population growth of modern humans, combined with their capacity for cultural and technological innovation, gradually displaced Neanderthal populations across Europe and western Asia.

Continued Research and Public Engagement

Pääbo has remained active in both research and public engagement well into the 2020s. He continues to direct research at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and regularly delivers public lectures on topics related to paleogenetics and human evolution. In December 2025, he visited Estonia, where he delivered a lecture at the University of Tartu's 106th anniversary ceremony and spoke about his family's Estonian heritage and the country's contributions to science.

Personal Life

Svante Pääbo's father, Sune Bergström, was a Nobel laureate in his own right, making the Pääbo-Bergström family one of the few in which both a parent and child have received Nobel Prizes. Pääbo's mother, Karin Pääbo, was of Estonian origin, and the family maintained connections to Estonia throughout Pääbo's life. During his December 2025 visit to Estonia, Pääbo spoke warmly about his family's ties to the country and expressed admiration for Estonia's scientific community.

Pääbo has been based in Leipzig, Germany, for much of his career, living near the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology where he has conducted the bulk of his research. He holds both Swedish and German professional affiliations and has maintained connections to the broader Scandinavian and Baltic scientific communities.

Recognition

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2022)

On 3 October 2022, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced that the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for that year would be awarded solely to Svante Pääbo "for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution." The Nobel Committee cited Pääbo's sequencing of the Neanderthal genome and his discovery of the Denisovans as achievements that "established an entirely new scientific discipline" and provided fundamental new insights into human evolutionary history.

The announcement was covered extensively in the international scientific press. Science magazine described Pääbo as an "ancient DNA pioneer" and noted that his work had "illuminated both the distant past and the present" by revealing the genetic connections between modern humans and their archaic relatives. Nature profiled Pääbo following the announcement, describing his decades-long effort to recover DNA from ancient humans and the methodological innovations that made his discoveries possible.

Other Honors

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Pääbo has received numerous other scientific honors throughout his career, including the Japan Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, both awarded for his contributions to the understanding of human evolution through ancient DNA research.

In November 2025, the University of Tartu recognized Pääbo for "his outstanding achievements in the study of human evolution," and he was invited to deliver the academic lecture at the university's 106th anniversary ceremony on 1 December 2025. The lecture, titled "About Neandertals, and how they live on in many of us," was delivered in English and drew attention to the ongoing relevance of Pääbo's research to understanding human biology.

Legacy

Svante Pääbo's contributions to science extend beyond his individual discoveries to the establishment of an entirely new field of inquiry. Paleogenetics, the discipline he founded, has grown from a niche pursuit into a major branch of evolutionary biology with applications spanning archaeology, anthropology, medicine, and forensic science. The techniques Pääbo and his team developed for extracting and analyzing ancient DNA have been adopted by laboratories worldwide and applied to a broad range of organisms and time periods, from ancient plants and animals to medieval plague victims and early human settlers of the Americas.

His demonstration that Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred with modern humans fundamentally altered the prevailing model of human evolution. Prior to Pääbo's work, the dominant view held that modern humans had replaced archaic hominins without significant genetic exchange. The genomic evidence produced by Pääbo's laboratory showed that human evolutionary history was far more complex, involving multiple episodes of interbreeding and gene flow between distinct hominin groups. This revised understanding has had profound implications for how scientists interpret the fossil record and reconstruct the population dynamics of early human groups.

The medical relevance of Pääbo's discoveries has also become increasingly apparent. Research building on his work has shown that archaic DNA inherited from Neanderthals and Denisovans influences a range of traits in modern humans, including immune function, metabolism, and disease susceptibility. During the COVID-19 pandemic, studies identified Neanderthal-derived genetic variants that were associated with both increased and decreased risk of severe illness, demonstrating the continued real-world significance of Pääbo's foundational research.

Pääbo's influence is also evident in the next generation of scientists he has trained. Many former members of his laboratory at the Max Planck Institute have gone on to establish their own research programs in ancient DNA and evolutionary genetics, extending the reach and impact of the field he created. As the technologies for ancient DNA recovery continue to improve, and as genomic data from an ever-expanding range of ancient specimens become available, the scientific framework Pääbo established continues to shape the direction of research into human origins and evolution.