A Canadian-born scientist recently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine is one of five Nobel Prizes given out each year for achievement in various scientific fields.
This year, a very unusual situation occurred – one that required a special emergency meeting of the Nobel Prize committee.
When the Nobel Foundation announced that it was giving the award to three scientists: Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann and Canadian Ralph Steinman, it didn’t realize that Steinman had died from cancer three days earlier.
Nobel Prize rules forbid nomination of the deceased, according to online encyclopedia Wikipedia. However, Steinman died after he was nominated and selected to win the award.
The committee pored over the rules to figure out whether Steinman should be allowed to keep his award, which includes a medal and $1.5 million. They say that if a person dies after being selected, but before being given the award he can keep it. In this case, Steinman passed away from cancer after being selected but before his name as a winner was even announced.
The committee decided to allow Steinman to keep the award.
Steinman won the prize for his research helping us to better understand the body’s immune system.
The Nobel Prizes were started in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who put in his will that he wanted five awards presented to outstanding scientists.
Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Kathleen Tilly
Writing/Discussion Prompt
If you were part of the Nobel Prize committee, would you change the rules so people who have passed away can win the award? Why or why not?
Reading Prompt
In order to better understand this article, make a list of the most important information. You may want to organize this information on a timeline to help your understanding.
Primary
Demonstrate understanding of a variety of texts by identifying important ideas and some supporting details (OME, Reading: 1.4).
Junior
Demonstrate understanding of a variety of texts by summarizing important ideas and citing supporting details (OME, Reading: 1.4).
Intermediate
Demonstrate understanding of increasingly complex texts by summarizing important ideas and citing a variety of details that support the main idea (OME, Reading: 1.4).
Grammar Feature: Conjunctions
A conjunction is a word that joins other words or parts of a sentence together. For example, “James and Kira are brother and sister.” In this sentence ‘and’ is a conjunction because it joins words together. Some examples of conjunctions are: and, but, for, yet, so, or.
Find all of the sentences in the article that have conjunctions.
