Svante Pääbo is a biologist specializing in evolutionary genetics. He was born in 1955 in Stockholm, Sweden and earned his PhD from Uppsala University in 1986. Since 1997, he has been director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Svante's department in August 2002 published findings about the "language gene", FOXP2, which is unique to humans and lacking or damaged in some individuals with language disabilities.