The winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo. The award was given for "discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution." The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor (896,256.51 US dollars). 

The award recognizes how the Swedish geneticist's work in the field of evolutionary genetics. This has led us to a crucial understanding of the genome of extinct hominids. In 1997, together with colleagues, Pääbo managed to extract mitochondrial DNA from a Neanderthal bone. 

Sequencing the full genome of Neanderthals was an enormous challenge that was completed in over a decade later, published in the journal Science in May 2010.