Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza is an Emertius Professor at Stanford University, where he has been since 1970. He is one of the most distinguished genticists of the twentieth century and has dedicated his research to the study of the origin of modern humans and their evolutionary history by using genetic markers. His work has always taken a multi-disciplinary apprach including demography, archaeology, linguistics, anthropology, surnames and to the interactions of genetic and cultural evolution.