© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Japan 2020 Winner Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo poses with his trophy during the Japan Awards ceremony in Tokyo, Japan April 13, 2022. This year’s Japan Prize goes to winners include the years 2020 and 2021. Eugene
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Scientist Svante Paabo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries “related to the extinct hominin genome and human evolution”, the agency said. awards said Monday.
The prize, arguably the most prestigious in scientific circles, is awarded by the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Karolinska Institute and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($900,357).
This is the first of the awards this year.
Created by the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and wealthy businessman Alfred Nobel, prizes for scientific, literary and peace achievements have been awarded since 1901, although the economic prize is an additional award later.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put the center of medical research in its early stages with many hoping that the development of a vaccine that has allowed the world to regain a sense of normalcy may eventually pay off.
However, it often takes years for any given study to be honored, with the committees responsible for selecting the winners seeking to determine its full merits with certainty between what is always is a field full of candidates.
In any case, this year’s festival must mark the return of the Nobel banquet in Stockholm after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, an event marked by old-world pomp and glamour after so many years. years of social distancing.
Last year’s medicine prize went to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for discovering receptors in human skin that can sense temperature and touch, converting physical impact into nerve impulses.
Previous winners in the field include a host of prominent researchers, notably Alexander Fleming, who shared the 1945 prize for the discovery of penicillin, and Robert Koch, who won. in 1905 for investigations into tuberculosis.
(1 dollar = 11.1067 Swedish crowns)
