Nobel jury caught off guard by death of laureate

STOCKHOLM, Oct 3, 2011 (AFP) - The Nobel Medicine Prize jury was caught off guard Monday when it honoured a Canadian scientist who unbeknownst to them died just days before the announcement, with prize rules forbidding posthumous awards.

STOCKHOLM, Oct 3, 2011 (AFP) - The Nobel Medicine Prize jury was caught off guard Monday when it honoured a Canadian scientist who unbeknownst to them died just days before the announcement, with prize rules forbidding posthumous awards.

The committee was not aware that Ralph Steinman, who was named the 2011 Medicine Prize laureate together with Bruce Beutler of the United States and Luxembourg-born Frenchman Jules Hoffmann, passed away just days before Monday's announcement, the head of the committee said.

AFP - A photograph of deceased 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine winner Ralph Steinman is seen at Rockefeller University on October 3, 2011 in New York City
AFP - A photograph of deceased 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine winner Ralph Steinman is seen at Rockefeller University on October 3, 2011 in New York City

Steinman, 68, died of pancreatic cancer on September 30, according to a statement on Monday issued by Rockefeller University in New York where he worked.

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute that awards the prize held a meeting late Monday to discuss how to handle the situation, deciding ultimately that Steinman would remain a Nobel laureate.

"The events that have occurred are unique and, to the best of our knowledge, are unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Prize," the committee said in a statement.

The statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate since 1974 that the award may not be given posthumously, but a person may be awarded the honour if he or she dies between the time of the announcement in October and the formal prize ceremony in December.

"An interpretation of the purpose of this rule leads to the conclusion that Ralph Steinman shall be awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize," the committee said.

It said the purpose of the rule was "to make it clear that the Nobel Prize shall not deliberately be awarded posthumously."

"However, the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Ralph Steinman was made in good faith, based on the assumption that the Nobel Laureate was alive. This was true -- though not at the time of the decision -- only a day or so previously."

"The decision made by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet thus remains unchanged," it said.

Earlier, the head of the Nobel Assembly, Goeran Hansson, said the committee would stand by its choice.

"What we can do now is only to regret that he could not experience the joy," Hansson told Swedish news agency TT, adding: "We don't name new winners, that was our decision."

Only two people have won a Nobel posthumously, before the statutes were changed.

One of them was Dag Hammarskjoeld, the Swedish secretary general of the United Nations who died in a plane crash in 1961 and received the Nobel Peace Prize the same year.

And in 1931, the Nobel prize in literature was awarded posthumously to another Swede, Erik Axel Karlfeldt.

Steinman, Beutler and Hoffmann were honoured for their pioneering research on the immune system.

Beutler and Hoffmann shared one half of the 10 million kronor ($1.48 million, 1.08 million euros) prize, while Steinman was awarded the other half.

The three were lauded for their work on the body's complex defence system in which signalling molecules unleash antibodies and killer cells to respond to invading microbes.

Understanding this throws open the door to new drugs and also tackling immune disorders, such as asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease, in which the body mysteriously attacks itself.

The prize is to be formally handed over at a gala ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death of prize creator Alfred Nobel in 1896.

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