when the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was awarded to a dead man.

　　It is a complex story, one that could not have been

　　foreseen when Nobel, the Swedish inventor, died in 1896. But it all

　　traces back to his will,

　　written at a time when

　　international prizes were an original idea.

　　Nobel did not say why he wanted to reward scientists who “made the most important discovery” during the previous year. One can guess that he wanted to reward present­day innovation and not to give tombstone awards to Galileo, Hippocrates, and other scientists from centuries past.

　　But will and science often got involved. The one­year timing proved impractical; scientific findings generally need to be tested,

　　sometimes for decades,

　　before their value is appreciated.

　　Perhaps to avoid the Galileo problem, the Nobel Foundation did state clearly that the award would be given only to living people; that rule was made formal in the 1970s. But the rule against posthumous awards has now been violated several times — most recently this month, when the prize in medicine was given to Dr. Ralph M. Steinman, a scientist at Rockefeller University, who died three days before his election.

　　His discovery, called dendritic cells, took place in 1917.

　　The first posthumous winner was the poet Erik Karlfeldt. Karlfeldt had refused his selection in 1918 because he was a longtime member of the Swedish Nobel Academy. When he was selected again in 1931, he had died that April.

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