David Reich

David Reich turned ancient DNA into a tool for rewriting human prehistory, using statistical analysis of modern and ancient genomes to trace migrations across Europe and reconstruct interbreeding between modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. A Harvard Medical School geneticist and Howard Hughes investigator, he was named one of Nature's ten most influential scientists in 2015 and has since collected the Dan David Prize, the Wiley Prize, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal for work that made population genomics a mainstream historical discipline.