About Professor Sykes

Professor Bryan Sykes

“I met a traveller from an antique land”: Genetics as history

Professor Bryan Sykes, Oxford University

Professor Bryan Sykes is the Founder of Oxford Ancestors and is a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford. His work in the field of mitochondrial DNA analysis allowed him and his co-workers to produce the most complete DNA family tree of our species yet constructed. Using his own surname, Professor Sykes was the first to show the astonishingly close connection between surnames and Y-chromosomes.

Professor Sykes is the author of The Seven Daughters of Eve, which traces the descent of Europeans to seven women who lived tens of thousands of years ago. His new book, Adam’s Curse, traces human descent through the paternal line looking at the Y chromosome and discovers that men are doomed to extinction.

Professor Sykes gave public lectures throughout New Zealand in October and November 2003 as part of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA.

His lectures explored how Genetics promises to predict our future, but how it can also be used to interpret the human past. He explained how, from unlikely beginnings, the new science of molecular genetics has transformed the way we view the human past, how it has solved issues that have perplexed scholars for centuries and also how it has demolished any scientific basis for racism. Specifically, he covered how the study of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA has led the way to revising what we know about the colonisation of the Pacific and the way in which Homo sapiens first settled Europe, a continent once dominated by the Neanderthals.

Professor Sykes lives in Oxford and on the Isle of Skye. He has come to New Zealand as The University of Auckland Sir Douglas Robb lecturer for 2003. The Royal Society of New Zealand, in partnership with the British High Commission and British Council New Zealand.