Sir

The Correspondences “Protest at Nobel omission of Moncada” (Nature 396, 614; 1998) were a welcome contribution to the debate about criteria for selection of Nobel laureates. The editor's note on the same page read: “The most troublesome aspect of the Nobel process is the apparently unchangeable fact that the prizes are distributed according to the terms of Nobel's will, which states that the number of recipients in each category shall be limited to three.”

This clarification is not strictly correct. There is no reference to the 'three-person rule' in Nobel's will. This principle was established in paragraphs1b and 4 of the statutes of the Nobel Foundation that interpret and elucidate the will (see the Nobel Foundation website at http://www.nobel.se). “There shall be no departure from the following main principles ... In no case may a prize be divided between more than three persons.” The provisions in these paragraphs were the subject of lengthy negotiations from 1896 to 1900 between Nobel's executors, representatives of his (largely disinherited) heirs, awarders of the prize and the Swedish government.