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This year's Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to Svante Pääbo.
This was announced by the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute on Monday in Stockholm.
Pääbo is Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Among other things, he was the first researcher to sequence the Neanderthal genome.
The Nobel Prize is considered one of the highest honors in science.
It is endowed with ten million Swedish crowns, which corresponds to around 920,000 euros.
The winners share the money.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine is traditionally the first to be announced.
Last year, molecular biologists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were honored for their discovery of temperature and touch receptors in the body.
The awards in physics and chemistry will follow on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by those in literature and peace on Thursday and Friday.
At the end, the prize for economics will be awarded next Monday.
With the exception of the Nobel Prize in Economics, all awards go back to the will of the Swedish researcher Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).
With the foundation of the Nobel Prizes, the industrial magnate wanted to solve a conflict that determined his life: The inventor of dynamite was at odds with the fact that many of his discoveries were used for the war.
Therefore, he bequeathed his fortune to a foundation.
The aim was to use the money to honor researchers who “have rendered the greatest benefit to mankind in the past year”.
The Nobel Prizes are traditionally presented on the anniversary of Nobel's death on December 10th - the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, all other awards in Stockholm.
Those selected also receive their prestigious Nobel medals and diplomas.
More soon on SPIEGEL.de
sak/dpa