Svante Paabo (born 1955), Swedish evolutionary geneticist. Paabo is director of genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He pioneered the recovery of DNA from ancient animals and plants. In 2006, he announced the Neanderthal genome sequencing project. Working on 38,000-year-old bone, Paabo's team yielded the first complete Neanderthal mitochondrial genome sequence in 2006, with the full Neanderthal genome published in 2010. Paabo received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022 for this sequencing of the first Neanderthal genome. Photographed in 2014.