[Laveran and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine]

This article recalls the conditions under which the first Nobel Prizes were awarded. The scientific personalities who nominated Alphonse Laveran for the prize from 1901 to 1907 are recalled, among them Ronald Ross, winner in 1902. In 1907, Karl Axel Hampus Mörner submitted Alphonse Laveran for the prize. He was then the rector of the Karolinska Institutet, as well as the chairman of the Nobel Committee and the Nobel Assembly, and had never before expressed an interest in one scientist more than another. The previous year, the Nobel Assembly had for the first time awarded the prize for physiology or medicine to two laureates, Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system". In 1907, the numerous, repeated and simultaneous nominations of Élie Metchnikoff and Paul Ehrlich were probably the subject of an important debate, which finally turned out in favour of Alphonse Laveran. We explain why we think the choice of the president prevailed. In 1908, when Laveran became one of the nominators of the prize, his main competitors of 1907 were finally crowned simultaneously "in recognition of their work on immunity".The long delay between the discovery of the malarial parasite (1880) and the award of the prize "in recognition of his work on the role played by protozoa in the appearance of diseases" is put into perspective and illustrates what will almost always be the practice, contrary to Alfred Nobel's rule of awarding the prize within a year after the discovery. The particular circumstances of the award of the prize in 1907 are described.The donation that Alphonse Laveran made on December 22nd 1907 to the Pasteur Institute out of the amount of his prize was 100,000 francs, i.e. a little more than half of the 190,000 francs grant received from the Nobel Committee. Its value, in terms of purchasing power in euros 2021, is estimated at over 400,000 euros. The use made of it by the Pasteur Institute is clearly shown in the minutes of its Board of Directors in 1908, as having been mainly devoted to the fitting out and equipment of the Laboratory of Tropical Diseases that Laveran was calling for in the buildings recently purchased on Rue Falguière (Paris); the donation was not used for the construction of new buildings.