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Whoops: Today's Nobel Winner Died on Friday

Foundation will award prize posthumously

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted Oct 3, 2011 12:43 PM CDT | Updated Oct 3, 2011 1:43 PM CDT

(Newser) – Earlier today, the Nobel team announced this year’s winners for medicine; hours later, it emerged that one of the three intended recipients, immune researcher Ralph Steinman, has been dead for three days, the BBC reports. "The news is bittersweet," said the president of Rockefeller University, where Steinman worked, "as we also learned this morning from Ralph's family that he passed a few days ago after a long battle with cancer."

The news prompted an emergency meeting of the Nobel committee, because the prize's rules state that “work produced by a person since deceased shall not be considered." The committee said it hadn't known Steinman was dead, and that the situation was "unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Prize." After the meeting, the committee confirmed that its decision "shall remain unchanged," the Washington Post reports. It reasoned that Steinman's death was similar to past cases in which laureates have died after being named but before the award ceremony.

In this April 24, 2009 file photo, Dr. Ralph Steinman of Rockefeller University speaks during a news conference in Albany. (AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)

Family, friends and colleagues socialize in front of a photo of Ralph Steinman during a ceremony to honor his winning the Nobel Prize at Rockefeller University in New York, Monday, Oct. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The microscope that Ralph Steinman used to make key discoveries in the early '70s is displayed in his lab in New York, Monday, Oct. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

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Whoops: Today's Nobel Winner Died on Friday

Foundation will award prize posthumously

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