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Working across disciplines is a delight for Erika Hagelberg (Biochemistry PhD 1979), who for many years has been extracting DNA from bones to answer questions about ancient and more recent history.

Erika’s range of interests throughout her life has always been broad. After her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Queen Elizabeth College in London (now part of King’s College London), she worked as a Spanish and German translator for the manufacturing company Imperial Chemical Industries. She then undertook her PhD in Biochemistry at Gonville & 91ֱ�� College before moving to Dudley College of Technology for a course in Glass Design Techniques and Technology.

At 91ֱ��, Erika was a member of the first student cohort to include women; the only female students in the MCR at the time were herself and two Australian postgraduate lawyers. Erika recalls with amusement that, when she obtained her PhD in 1983, she caused consternation by wearing a men’s dinner suit to High Table at the graduation dinner, in accordance with the College’s dress code guidelines.

But it was not the scarcity of women in College at the time that left the largest impact on Erika. She says: “Being in Cambridge was a great novelty for me because I did my undergraduate degree at a small university in London. What I liked about arriving here was that I lived in a house with people who worked in different subjects; I liked the heterogeneity.”

Owing to this love for bridging different areas of research, Erika’s interest was piqued when she discovered the field of ancient DNA, which would allow her to combine biological research with history. When in 1987 she took on a job at the University of Oxford extracting DNA from old bones, this project was entirely novel and its potential for success uncertain. After two years of experimenting with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique for amplifying small samples of DNA, Erika produced a paper on the subject which was accepted by the journal Nature, a moment of validation which she describes as life changing.

The response her revelations received was unforeseen. A week after her paper was published, the police approached asking Erika if she could assist them with a case involving a murdered teenage girl. “It was grim, but it was also extremely exciting,” says Erika. “PCR had never been used as a source of evidence in court, and we got results. It resulted not only in another Nature paper but also in the conviction of two people for the murder.”

Since then, the list of discoveries Erika has made is nothing short of remarkable. Using DNA extraction, she has identified the remains of the Romanov family, who were murdered and mutilated beyond recognition by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and of Josef Mengele, the so-called ‘Angel of Death’ who performed horrific medical experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz and who fled to South America after the Second World War.

She has also collaborated with archaeologists to track the migration patterns of ancient civilisations including the inhabitants of the city of Hierapolis in modern-day Turkey and of Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. Notably, she found that the DNA of present-day Easter Islanders is not only related to ancient Polynesian peoples (believed to be the original settlers of Easter Island) but also carries a significant South American component, adding a further layer of complexity to our understanding of ancient migration and settlement patterns.

Erika, who has been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, is proud of how her varied career has broken a common stereotype. She says: “One misconception concerning people with neurodivergence is that they are fixated on one subject and work in one area repeatedly. All I can say from my own experience is that I’ve become immersed in many subjects – the history of the Second World War, Holocaust studies, family history, molecular biology, ancient Greece, Pacific Islanders – and I’ve studied them in great depth. I think maybe people might be able to reconsider some of the ideas about people with autism becoming too specialised.”