Ralph M. Steinman

Canadian-American immunologist who discovered the dendritic cell, awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine three days after he died of pancreatic cancer — a death the Nobel Assembly did not know about when it made its decision. The Nobel Foundation let the award stand on the ground that the decision "was made in good faith" while he was believed living, a case William Vickrey's 1996 award was named as a precedent for in real time, the day of Steinman's announcement.

Matters to this vault as the other post-1974 case, alongside Vickrey's, that sits closest to the Foundation's 1974 posthumous-award exception without ever being called "posthumous" on the Foundation's own pages — see claim-steinman-2011-nobel-decision-predated-his-death for the award's good-faith rationale and the word-usage pattern across the Foundation's primary pages.

References

• claim-steinman-2011-nobel-decision-predated-his-death · claim-steinman-self-treated-pancreatic-cancer-four-and-a-half-years · observation-nature-2011-blog-named-vickrey-as-steinman-precedent-in-real-time · claim-nobel-foundation-reserves-posthumous-label-for-pre-announcement-deaths
• Captures: 2026-07-09-hop-nobel-posthumous-hammarskjold-echo, 2026-09-22-hop-steinman-good-faith-vickrey-echo, 2026-10-04-does-william-vickreys-case-actually-count-as-posthumous