E-Paper
Scientist got Nobel news a day late, was hiking in grizzly territory
The Nobel committee could not reach him as he was wrapping up a three-week nature trek on Monday with his phone in airplane mode.
When the Nobel Prize committee tried reaching out to Fred Ramsdell, one of the three scientists to get the medicine prize, he was hiking "off the grid".
Ramsdell, an American scientist, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for research into how the immune system is kept in check by identifying its "security guards".
The Nobel committee could not reach him as he was wrapping up a three-week nature trek on Monday with his phone in airplane mode. Meanwhile, Nobel organizers, media outlets and friends were fruitlessly trying to reach him.
Ramsdell and his wife were heading back to their hotel when they stopped to fix something on their car and she switched on her cell phone and saw the messages.
Also Read: ‘Don’t be ridiculous': How medicine Nobel winners for 2025 reacted to the news
When she yelled upon seeing the news, Fred Ramsdell thought his wife had spotted a grizzly bear. Her phone was flooded with messages when the phone regained cell service during the stop in Montana.
Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute, said it took until Tuesday morning before they got to talk to the laureate.
"They were still in the wild and there are plenty of grizzly bears there, so he was quite worried when she let out a yell," Perlmann told Reuters.
"Fortunately, it was the Nobel Prize. He was very happy and elated and had not expected the prize at all," he added.
Ramsdell shares the prize, which includes $1.2 million and an instant fame, with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system.
On Monday, Ramsdell's lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, told AFP that the scientist was "living his best life" on an "off the grid" hiking journey. His friend and colleague Jeffrey Bluestone, who co-founded the lab, said he couldn't reach him either.
How two other Nobel winners reacted
When 74-year-old Shimon Sakaguchi, a distinguished professor at Osaka University in Japan, got a call from Thomas Perlmann, he “sounded incredibly grateful”.
Sakaguchi, while addressing a press briefing, called the award “a happy surprise". He said he thought he would have to wait “until the research makes more contributions”.
Meanwhile, Mary Brunkow got the news from a news agency photographer who reached his home in Seattle early morning.
“My phone rang and I saw a number from Sweden and thought: ‘That’s just, that’s spam of some sort’,” she told the AP photographer. Her husband, Ross Colquhoun, shared her actual reaction, “When I told Mary she won, she said, ‘don’t be ridiculous!’”
