23 Facts About Eske Willerslev

Eske Willerslev was born on 5 June 1971 and is a Danish evolutionary geneticist notable for his pioneering work in molecular anthropology, palaeontology, and ecology.

Eske Willerslev currently holds the Prince Philip Professorship in Ecology and Evolution at University of Cambridge, UK and the Lundbeck Foundation Professorship in Evolution at Copenhagen University, Denmark.

Eske Willerslev is director of the Centre of Excellence in GeoGenetics, a research associate at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and a professorial fellow at St John's College, Cambridge.

Eske Willerslev lived as a fur trapper in the Sakha Republic from 1993 to 1994.

Eske Willerslev handed in his PhD thesis as a doctoral thesis and obtained his Doctor of Science degree from Copenhagen University in 2004.

Eske Willerslev moved to the University of Oxford as an independent Wellcome Trust Fellow, and became full professor at Copenhagen University at the age of 33.

In 2015 Eske Willerslev took up the Prince Philip Chair in Ecology and Evolution at the Department of Zoology at University of Cambridge.

Eske Willerslev is a Foreign Associate Member of The National Academy of Sciences, elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and an Honorary Doctor at both University of Oslo and University of Tartu, Estonia.

Eske Willerslev holds the Order of the Dannebrog.

Eske Willerslev has been a visiting professor at Oxford University, UK, and a Visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley.

Eske Willerslev later showed that environmental DNA can be obtained from a variety of settings including basal ice and revealed a forested Greenland some 400,000 years ago, questioning if southern Greenland was ice free during the last interglacial.

Eske Willerslev's team has used environmental DNA to reveal forested refugia in Scandinavia during the last interglacial, and that forbs rather than grasses were dominating the steppe environments of the northern hemisphere during the Pleistocene and were an important food source for the megafauna.

In 2017 Eske Willerslev's team was the first to apply a metagenomic approach to environmental DNA, reconstructing the biological succession of North America's interior Ice-Free Corridor.

Eske Willerslev led the team that published in 2011 a large-scale genetic study on the population dynamics of six Late Pleistocene megafaunal species across the northern hemisphere: woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse, reindeer, muskox, and reindeer, coupling their genetic data with climate niche modelling and the archaeological record.

In 2010, a team led by Eske Willerslev sequenced the genome of a 4,000-year-old man from the Saqqaq culture of Greenland from his hair.

In 2008 Eske Willerslev led the DNA study on coprolites from the Paisley Caves in Oregon showing human presence in North America more than 14,000 years ago and some 1000 years prior to Clovis.

In 2015 Eske Willerslev's team sequenced the genome of the Kennewick Man, a ca.

In 2011 Eske Willerslev's team sequenced the first Aboriginal Australian genome from an historically ancient tuft of hair.

Eske Willerslev's team has been the first to conduct large scale genome sequencing of ancient pathogens.

Eske Willerslev appears regularly in media such as magazines, newspapers, radio and TV when discussions turn to human evolution, migration, and the role of science in society.

Eske Willerslev's work is featured in the documentary Hunt for the Oldest DNA which aired on Nova in 2024.

Eske Willerslev's father thought this would help them to become hardy later in life.

However, influenced by numerous experiences living with native people, Eske Willerslev came to respect, and to some extent believe, in supernatural powers unknown to science.