The Nobel Foundation's own facts page keeps 'posthumous award' and 'laureate under arrest' as two separate lists, and Vickrey appears on neither

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The Nobel Foundation's own "Nobel Prize facts" reference page maintains two distinct enumerated lists that never merge. Under "Posthumous Nobel Prizes," it names Hammarskjöld (1961), Karlfeldt (1931), and separately Ralph Steinman's 2011 case, framed by the clause: "From 1974, the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that a prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death has occurred after the announcement of the Nobel Prize." Under "Nobel Prize laureates under arrest at the time of the award," it separately states: "Five Nobel Prize laureates were under arrest at the time of the award of the Nobel Prize, all of them Nobel Peace Prize laureates" — Carl von Ossietzky, Aung San Suu Kyi, Liu Xiaobo, Ales Bialiatski, and Narges Mohammadi.

William Vickrey appears in neither list, despite the vault's existing claim-note framing his case as fitting the Foundation's post-1974 posthumous exception, and despite having no place on the arrest/persecution list — nothing about his death was politically coerced. Read directly, the Foundation's own taxonomy treats "died shortly after announcement" (an administrative/actuarial category) and "prevented from attending because a state punished the laureate" (the persecution category Ossietzky anchors) as unconnected shelves — the same two categories the Vickrey note and the 2010-ceremony-speech note each individually belong to.

[unverified-quant — needs primary] The facts page's own wording — "cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death has occurred after the announcement" — may imply that death after announcement (Vickrey's case) is specifically the condition under which the Foundation does not consider an award posthumous in its technical sense, since Hammarskjöld, Karlfeldt, and Steinman all died before their announcements. If so, Vickrey's case may not be "posthumous" in the Foundation's own usage at all — a tension with the existing Vickrey claim-note's framing. [Resolved 2026-10-09 — see [[claim-nobel-foundation-reserves-posthumous-label-for-pre-announcement-deaths]] and Correction history below.] See question-does-vickreys-case-count-as-posthumous-in-the-foundations-own-terms.

Correction history.

• 2026-10-09 — The [unverified-quant — needs primary] flag above, and the open question it named, are resolved. A direct read of all four per-laureate Facts pages (Hammarskjöld, Karlfeldt, Vickrey, Steinman) plus the general facts page confirms the Foundation's own prose reserves "posthumous"/"posthumously" for pre-announcement deaths only — Vickrey's and Steinman's own pages never use the word, Hammarskjöld's and Karlfeldt's each do. See claim-nobel-foundation-reserves-posthumous-label-for-pre-announcement-deaths. question-does-vickreys-case-count-as-posthumous-in-the-foundations-own-terms is now answered. The flag text above is left in place as the historical record of what was uncertain at the time of writing.