Turi King

Our next guest is famous for her genetic detective work on famous people.

Professor Turi King led the genetic identification of Richard III's 500-year-old skeletal remains and authenticated and analysed a sample of Adolf Hitler's genetic material in the documentary Hitler's DNA, Blueprint of a Dictator.

Professor King is the director of the Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath.

And her new book, The Secrets of Our DNA, is a highly engaging collection of stories presented to show how genetics has changed the world.

So I was able to use this lady called Wendy Daldick.

She was very kindly gave her DNA so I could compare that against the skeleton to prove that it was him.

On Sunday Extra, we're speaking with Professor Turi King, author of The Secrets of Our DNA, How Genetics Has Changed the World.

And Turi,

A striking element of the investigation was how DNA technology linked ancient bones to living people.

This process was undertaken by Professor Turi King, who had previously mapped the lineage of Richard’s sister Anne through a collaborative project with genealogists and university labs.

In addition, the dig revealed a mysterious coffin nearby, initially thought to be part of the king’s burial context.

Subsequent analysis suggested that the coffin likely housed the remains of another individual, a medieval monk or perhaps a minor noble, illustrating how burials in friary sites could contain multiple occupants and complicate the interpretation of space.

Then in 2024, a team of scientists finally resolved it.

In 2024, a study published in the Journal of Eye Science was led by the forensic geneticist Walter Parson, and it drew on the expertise of some of the most accomplished DNA specialists in the world, including Professor Turi King, the geneticist who had famously identified the remains of King Richard III after they were discovered beneath a car park in the English city of Leicester.

The team's advantage was technological.

In the years since the earlier contradictory tests, the science of reading old and badly degraded DNA had advanced enormously, driven in part by the work of sequencing the DNA of Neanderthals from fragments tens of thousands of years old.