Bryan Sykes

Bryan Clifford Sykes (9 September 1947 – 10 December 2020) was a British geneticist, university professor, popular-science writer, and genetic genealogy company executive. He received a fellowship at Wolfson College and a personal chair, later emeritus professorship, in human genetics at the University of Oxford.

Sykes published the first report on retrieving DNA from ancient bone (''Nature'', 1989). He was involved in a number of high-profile archaeogenetics (ancient DNA) cases, including that of Ötzi the Iceman.

Sykes is best known outside the community of geneticists for his two most popular books – ''The Seven Daughters of Eve'' (2001), and ''Blood of the Isles / Saxons, Vikings and Celts'' (2006) – both on the investigation of human history and prehistory through studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). However, many of his conclusions in these works about European populations and their histories have become dubious or have been invalidated by more recent advances in whole-genome sequencing for more detailed archaeogenetics. He also suggested an American accountant named Tom Robinson was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, a claim that was subsequently disproved.

Of more lasting significance, besides contributions to archaeogenetic technology, his mtDNA work in the Pacific demonstrated that the historical populating of Oceania took place entirely from Asia, dispelling a decades-persistent fringe theory of origins on the western coast of the Americas. Provided by Wikipedia