The 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology has been won by Svante Paabo, the Swedish geneticist, for his discoveries concerning human evolution. The award was announced on Monday, October 3, following Paabo’s selection by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology has been won by Svante Paabo, the Swedish geneticist, for his discoveries concerning human evolution. The award was announced on Monday, October 3, following Paabo’s selection by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet.
In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel, the Swedish polymath and inventor of dynamite, bequeathed the majority of his estate to create five prizes (Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology/Medicine plus one in literature and one for peace), recognizing “those, who during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” The first awards were conferred in 1901. A sixth award, not technically a Nobel, was established in 1968; it’s the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
In 2020, the Nobel Foundation’s Board of Directors increased the Nobel Prize amount to 10 million kroner (equal to a bit more than $1.1 million) per prize category.
Prior to this year’s award, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine had been awarded 112 times to 224 Nobel Prize laureates (212 men and 12 women) since its beginning in 1901.
