E-Paper
‘Living best life, hiking off grid’: Nobel prize winner Fred Ramsdell unreachable after win
Nobel medicine winner Fred Ramsdell is yet to learn of his award. He is reportedly “living his best life” on an off-grid hiking trip.
One of this year’s Nobel Prize winners for medicine is yet to find out about his win because he’s currently “living his best life” on an off-grid hiking trip, a spokesperson from his San Francisco-based lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, said.
Fred Ramsdell, a US-based immunologist, was jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in medicine alongside Mary Brunkow of Seattle and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their pioneering discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system.
But when the Nobel Committee tried to inform Ramsdell of his win, they couldn’t get through, according to a report by The Guardian. Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend of Ramsdell’s and co-founder of the lab, said the researcher deserves credit, but added that he can’t reach him either.
“I have been trying to get a hold of him myself. I think he may be backpacking in the backcountry in Idaho,” Bluestone said.
Initially, the Nobel committee was also unable to contact Brunkow, but they eventually got hold of her. “I asked them to, if they have a chance, call me back,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel committee, at the press conference announcing the winners.
(Also Read: John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis get Nobel Prize in Physics 2025)
Three scientists share Nobel Prize in Medicine
Ramsdell and Brunkow share the prize with Sakaguchi, 74, for research that identified the immune system’s “security guards”, called regulatory T-cells. Their work on “peripheral immune tolerance” has paved the way for new medical research and potential treatments for autoimmune diseases.
Sakaguchi made the first key find in 1995, discovering a previously unknown class of immune cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases. Brunkow and Ramsdell then made the other key discovery in 2001.
Notably, it’s not the first time the Nobel Committee has struggled to reach its winners. In 2020, economists Bob Wilson and Paul Milgrom were both asleep when the call came through. Wilson had to walk to Milgrom’s house and wake him up to deliver the news. A video from Milgrom’s security camera also captured the moment he was told about his win, to which he responded, “Yeah I have? Wow”.
