STORY: The Nobel Prize for Medicine 2022 goes to Svante Pääbo. As the Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday, the Swedish scientist will be honored for his discoveries in the field of genomic and evolutionary research. One of his major achievements is the sequencing of an entire Neanderthal genome to reveal the link between extinct hominids and modern humans. Pääbo is currently doing research at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. In a first statement on the website of the Max Planck Society, its President Martin Stratmann wrote that Pääbo’s work had revolutionized the understanding of the evolutionary history of modern humans. With the Pääbo award, Germany as a location for science can look forward to attention right at the start of this year’s Nobel Prize week. The prize, which is one of the most prestigious in the scientific world, is endowed with 10 million Swedish crowns, the equivalent of around 920 million euros.