Johannes Krause receives Leibniz Prize

Prof. Dr Johannes Krause, holder of the Professorship of Archaeogenetics at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, has been awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. The German Research Foundation has honoured his pioneering contributions to archaeogenetics and research into historical infectious diseases. The Leibniz Prize, worth 2.5 million euros, is considered the most important scientific award in Germany.

Where did historical infectious agents and diseases originate?

How did they spread and evolve? Biochemist Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has managed to reconstruct part of this past. A milestone was when he identified the bacterium Yersinia pestis as the pathogen responsible for the Black Death, thereby playing a key role in establishing the field of ancient pathogen genomics, which interlinks questions from the natural sciences and cultural studies. Since then, Krause has investigated the genetic signatures of a number of historical pathogens from human skeletons. These include bacteria and parasites that cause diseases such as plague, tuberculosis, malaria and hepatitis. Among other things, he was able to date the beginning of the second plague pandemic to 1338 to 1339 and locate it in Central Asia using ancient DNA in combination with historical sources from the Tianshan region.

Further milestones include Krause’s studies on the reconstruction of the (pre-)historical settlement history on various continents. His work provides insights into how infectious diseases have accompanied human history. They help to correct a Eurocentric perspective and bring global mechanisms into focus.

»I am delighted to receive this award. It recognizes the joint work of our team, which is using archaeogenetics to gain new insights into the genetic history of past cultures and reconstruct the evolution of pathogens. This honour encourages us to continue exploring the history of human societies and their pathogens from new perspectives«, says Krause.

About the person

Born in Thuringia in 1980, Johannes Krause studied biochemistry at Leipzig University and University College Cork and received his doctorate in 2008 at Leipzig University in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA). In 2010, he moved to the University of Tübingen, where he initially held a junior professorship in palaeogenetics and subsequently a W3 professorship in archaeogenetics and palaeogenetics. From 2014 to 2020, he was the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. Since 2018, he has also been a professor of archaeogenetics at the University of Jena and, since 2020, director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at MPI-EVA in Leipzig. He received an ERC Starting Grant (2013) and an ERC Synergy Grant (2020). His awards include the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize 2010 and the Fabio Frassetto Prize 2020. Krause has been a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2024.