When a representative of the Nobel Foundation could not reach Dr. Ralph M. Steinman by telephone Monday to deliver the thrilling news that he had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his breakthrough work in immunology, he sent him an e-mail about the honor.

But Dr. Steinman would never see the message nor learn of the prize. He died of pancreatic cancer on Friday, three days before the phone call from the Nobel committee. He had been battling the highly deadly disease for four years, using a treatment he devised to try to prolong his life, essentially turning his body into an extension of his research.

However, Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously. And so the Nobel committee, which had believed Dr. Steinman to be alive, faced a quandary.

On Monday morning, one of Dr. Steinman’s daughters, Alexis, saw the e-mail from the Nobel Foundation and contacted Rockefeller University in New York, where her father had worked. The president of the university, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, immediately called the chairman of the Nobel Prize committee to inform him.