"He Gave Us the Cornerstone of Sexual Medicine": A Nobel Plan but No Nobel Prize for Eugen Steinach
secondary literature · 2020
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SUMMARY
Archival study drawing on the Nobel Prize Committee records to document that Steinach was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at least nine times between 1920 and 1938, and that the Committee judged him as potentially prizeworthy but did not award it. The paper reconstructs the range of Steinach's work reviewed by the Committee including his sex-hormone and vasoligation research. It confirms that Freud's vasoligation was performed by Victor Blum in 1923, and documents the celebrity uptake of the 'steinaching' procedure. PMID 32172253 resolves on PubMed; PMCID PMC7592645 confirms open access on PubMed Central; DOI 10.1159/000506235 resolves on Karger.
NOTES
The Hansson et al. 2020 article provides archival grounding for Steinach’s scientific standing during the peak of the vasoligation era: he was under active Nobel consideration through 1938, which contextualizes the procedure’s institutional reception as more ambiguous than the “discredited quackery” framing in popular retrospect. The Nobel Committee’s hesitation is documented, as is the political dimension: Steinach’s forced departure from Vienna in 1938 following the Nazi annexation removed him from further consideration. PMID 32172253 and DOI 10.1159/000506235 confirmed.