2011 Nobel Prize for Medicine

The most disappointed man on the planet, has to be Japanese stem cell scientist Shinya Yamanaka who for an hour so was cited by a Wikipedia vandal as being the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011, the announcement went mildly viral around the web and on Twitter.

However, when the Nobel people got their livestream working again after a short technical glitch the announcement came that the award was to be divided, with one half jointly to Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity and the other half to Ralph M. Steinman for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity.

I suspect Yamanaka was not even aware of the false Wikipedia citation, although I’m sure someone will tell him sooner or later. Maybe next year Professor?

via The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Press Release.