Johannes Krause

Johannes Krause is a biochemist with a research focus on historical infectious diseases and human evolution. He received his PhD in genetics at the University of Leipzig. Subsequently, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, before he was appointed professor of archeo- and paleogenetics at the University of Tübingen. His research has contributed to the deciphering of the genetic heritage of the Neanderthals, and he discovered the first genetic evidence of the Denisovans, a Stone Age human form from Siberia. His recent work includes revealing the genetic heritage of ancient Egyptians, reconstructing the first Pleistocene African genomes, uncovering the source of the plague bacteria that caused epidemics in Europe, and clarifying the complex history of Europe’s prehistoric mass migrations. He is director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, which he co-founded in 2014, and has been professor of archaeogenetics at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena since 2018.

As of January 2019