Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s Legacy, 100 Years After His Birth

Time brings perspective. It is trivial, yet it is true. Five years after Luca Cavalli-Sforza left us, a year after the Nobel Prize awarded to Svante Pääbo, the extent of CavalliSforza’s scientific and cultural legacy is outstanding. The first Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology to a geneticist interested in the evolutionary history of humans is the recognition that understanding this history and the evolutionary forces that shaped us will be increasingly important to re-define, interpret and possibly cure some of the diseases that have plagued and will plague the human species. Whereas Svante Pääbo definitely pioneered and was the main engine behind the study of ancient DNA, there is no doubt that he, like all of us, he built on Cavalli-Sforza’s insights and achievements; so much so that, in our opinion and not only ours, both should share the credit for opening a whole new field of scientific knowledge.