First ride along the Pääbo Circuit

The circuit is based on the route Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo used to cycle as a student and researcher in Uppsala. Moving between subjects and settings, it reflects both the University’s breadth and the interdisciplinary journey that led to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022.

On 9 June the time had come to inaugurate the circuit. Svante Pääbo and Anders Hagfeldt went for a short bicycle ride along parts of the circuit in the company of members of Mattias Jakobsson’s research group. They assembled at the Evolutionary Biology Centre and before it was time to cycle off Hagfeldt gave a speech. Pääbo then cut the ribbon, which was shaped like a DNA helix, to music played by the student orchestra Hornboskapen.

A setting in which ideas can meet

The Pääbo Circuit highlights the way in which Uppsala University’s unique breadth – from humanities and social sciences to medicine, technology and natural sciences – creates a setting in which ideas can meet and grow. The circuit tells a physical story of how moving between one subject and another made possible research that was ultimately rewarded with the Nobel Prize.

“This is a way of emphasising the breadth of our University, the fact that we have many different knowledge centres within cycling distance here in Uppsala. But it also underlines the point that you sometimes don’t know exactly where it will end, you need to try out new routes as you seek your way forward,” Vice-Chancellor Hagfeldt said in his speech.

A fond reunion

For Svante Pääbo, it was a fond reunion with Uppsala and the cycle routes he pedalled along once upon a time.

“It’s just fantastic the way you could be working at the Wallenberg lab and then when you needed carbon-14 dating you cycled to the Ångström Laboratory and when you needed mummy samples you cycled to Gustavianum. So this cycling circuit feels tremendously appropriate. It’s a great honour, I’m really overwhelmed.”

Annica Hulth