Nobel Prize committee unaware newly named recipient is dead

posted at 1:37 pm on October 3, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Culture ]   

The Nobel Prize committee is wearing egg on its face today. A New York professor they named to receive the award for his groundbreaking cancer research died three days ago—of cancer. He was being treated, moreover, using a therapy based on his own research.

The intended recipient was Ralph Steinman, of Rockefeller University. Unbeknownst to the committee, which was planning the awards ceremony for today, Prof. Steinman died on Friday at age 68. And the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

Nobel Foundation spokeswoman Annika Pontikis is quoted as telling the Associated Press, “I think you can safely say that this hasn’t happened before.” One might quibble that the decision to award the prize to noted climatologist Al Gore should have caused the committee at least as much embarrassment.

The judges now face another dilemma: how to divvy up the $1.5 million in prize money. Steinman was to share the Nobel Prize for Medicine with two other recipients. Should those men—American scientist Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann—split the cash two ways? Or should a third go to Steinman’s heirs?

It’s a problem the Nobel committee has never had to confront before. Maybe they can get some help from the Obama administration, which has experience handing out money to dead people.

Related Articles

• Gore: Climate change deniers are this generation’s racists
• Al Gore comes unhinged during speech, slams opposing views as ‘Bulls–t’
• Faulty Nevada voting machines to be repaired—by SEIU
• Democrats demand investigations into ‘illegal’ GOP campaign financing
• Over $22 million in stimulus money sent to dead people
• Al Gore: “crazed sex poodle”?
• Latest culprit in global warming: The internet
• New documentary alleges voter fraud by Obama campaign in 2008 primaries
• Bombshell: Justice Department accused of encouraging voter fraud

Blowback