Medicine to Peace: These are the Nobel Prize winners in 2022

How far back does your family tree reach? The winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine just added a few thousand years.

Swedish geneticist Professor Svante Pääbo discovered the genetic identity of two of humankind’s earliest ancestors, opening a new window on human evolution in the process.

He was the first winner of this year's six Nobel Prizes that are being announced between 3 and 10 October. Here's what you need to know about his discovery - and the recipients of the other Nobel Prizes 2022, including the prizes for Literature and Peace.

Prof Pääbo, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, achieved what many scientists believed to be impossible when, in 2010, he sequenced the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans.

He went on to discover a previously unknown branch of the human family tree by extracting DNA from a 40,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in Siberia. The new hominid was named Denisova after the location in which the bone was discovered.

Announcing the award, Professor Nils-Göran Larsson, Chair of the Nobel Committee, said: “His discoveries help us to understand homo sapiens, present-day humans. This is a very fundamental, big discovery.

“On average, you and I have one to two per cent Neanderthal DNA… [they] are our closest extinct relatives that now have been defined at the genome level. Over the years to come, this will give huge insights into human physiology.”

Neanderthal people became extinct in Europe 30,000 years ago, only a few millennia after the appearance of modern humans. This prompted scientists to speculate that their disappearance may have been due to conflict with homo sapiens.

Winning Nobel Prizes in the Physiology and Medicine category is something of a family tradition for Professor Pääbo - his father, biochemist Sune Bergström, won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1982. It's the ninth time that a child of a Nobel laureate has also won a prize.

Scientists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments in quantum mechanics that laid the groundwork for rapidly-developing new applications in computing and cryptography.

"Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said of the laureates: Aspect, who is French, Clauser, an American and Zeilinger, an Austrian.

The scientists all conducted experiments into quantum entanglement, where two particles are linked regardless of the space between them, a field that unsettled Albert Einstein himself, who once referred to it in a letter as "spooky action at a distance".

"I'm very happy... I first started this work back in 1969, and I'm happy to still be alive to be able to get the prize," Clauser, 79, told Reuters by phone from his home in Walnut Creek, California.

Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry 'for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.'

Past chemistry winners include well-known scientific names such as Marie Curie, who also shared the physics prize with her husband and whose eldest daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, won the chemistry award just over two decades after her mother.

“This year’s Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route,” says Johan Åqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

The award is Sharpless's second Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2022. She's been recognized "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory."

Ernaux's work is mainly autobiographical.

The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties.

The laureates represent civil society in their countries. The Nobel Peace Prize website explains that the recipients "have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens ... together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy."

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022 has been awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig "for research on banks and financial crises."

The Nobel Prize explained that their work has "significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particular during financial crises."

Their analyses have delivered vital practical applications in regulating financial markets and managing financial crises, the Nobel Prize press release explains. For example, all three economists' work has contributed to our understanding of bank runs, the implications for financial systems and how policymakers can respond.

“The laureates’ insights have improved our ability to avoid both serious crises and expensive bailouts,” says Tore Ellingsen, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.

The Prizes were first awarded in 1901 by The Nobel Foundation, a private institution established in 1900, to carry out the wishes of Swedish chemist, engineer and industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896.

He left the bulk of his fortune in trust to establish the international awards that bear his name. To date, Nobel Prizes have been awarded 609 times to 975 people and organizations, or 943 individuals and 25 organizations if you count those who have won twice.

Undoubtedly all Nobel Prize winners deserve to be famous but here are some of the best known: