Magnus Manske was born on 24 May 1974 in Cologne, Germany. He studied biochemistry at the University of Cologne and graduated in 2006 with a PhD; his dissertation was on an open source tool for molecular biology, GENtle.
In 2012, Manske was co-author of a paper published in Nature that demonstrated new ways to identify areas where malaria parasites are evolving, and described techniques for mapping malarial drug resistance. The researchers developed a technique to extract the malaria parasite DNA directly from the blood, which minimizes errors in sequencing.
As a student, Manske was one of the most active contributors to the Nupedia project, submitting content on biology topics and developing tools and extensions for Nupedia. Later, unhappy with the existing software's limitations, Manske developed one of the first versions of what later became MediaWiki. His new version of the software was installed in 2002.
Manske was an adherent of open source and specifically, the GPL license, and his work on the early versions of MediaWiki was released under the GPL license.
Manske, along with others, was recognized as a major contributor to MediaWiki by the USENIX Advanced Computing Technical Association in 2010 when MediaWiki and the Wikimedia Foundation were honoured with a STUG award (Software Tools User Group).
Robert Zeschke (21 July 2011). WikiHooks – Eine protoypenhafte Webhook Extension für MediaWiki. GRIN Verlag. p. 9. ISBN 978-3-640-96452-9.
"Magnus Manske". malariagen.net. Retrieved 12 March 2016.