Bo

Diddley, Bo, 1928-2008, African-American singer, guitarist, and songwriter who was one of the founders of rock and roll, b. near McComb, Miss., as Otha Ellas Bates. He and his cousin, Gussie McDaniel, who raised him and whose last name he adopted, moved to Chicago when he was five. He studied violin, received his first guitar in 1940, and acquired the nickname "Bo Diddley." Within a decade he was performing in South Side clubs, often playing the rectangular electric guitar he designed. Diddley became known for his pounding signature beat (bom ba-bom bom, bom bom; later an essential component of rock music) and for his guitar effects, jive talk, and strutting stage style. He reached a wider audience with the release (1955) of his first record, containing "Bo Diddley" and "I'm a Man." He had a number of other hits, but is perhaps most important for his powerful influence on generations of rockers, e.g., Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, and Bruce Springsteen.

See G. R. White, Bo Diddley: Living Legend (1998).

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Svante Pääbo

Svante Pääbo (born April 20, 1955) is a biologist specializing in evolutionary genetics. He was born in 1955 in Stockholm, Sweden and earned his PhD from Uppsala University in 1986. Since 1997, he has been director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. In 1992, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research.

Pääbo's department in August 2002 published findings about the "language gene", FOXP2, which is lacking or damaged in some individuals with language disabilities.

Pääbo is known as one of the founders of paleogenetics, a discipline that uses the methods of genetics to study early humans and other ancient populations. In 2006, he announced a plan to reconstruct the entire genome of Neanderthals. In 2007, Pääbo was named one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the year.

References

PÄÄBO, Svante International Who's Who. accessed September 1, 2006.
Current Biography Yearbook, 2007, H.W. Wilson.
Pääbo, Svante (2008). "Imagine: an interview with Svante Pääbo. Interview by Jane Gitschier". PLoS Genetics 4 (3): e1000035.