Fred Ramsdell of Sonoma Biotherapeutics was hiking and "off grid" and so could not be reached by the Nobel Committee to let him know he had won the Prize in the Physiology or Medicine category.
Ramsdell shared the 2025 award with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their work shedding light on how the immune system spares healthy cells.
A spokesperson from his Sonoma Biotherapeutics told the Guardian that he was “living his best life” on an “off the grid” hiking foray.
Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend of Ramsdell’s and co-founder of the lab, said the researcher deserves credit but he couldn’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 told AFP.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute also hit a roadblock trying to reach Brunkow but eventually got ahold of her.
Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Assembly said it took until Tuesday morning Swedish time before he got to talk to the laureate, who was completely off-grid when the award was announced the previous day.
Ramsdell thought his wife had spotted a grizzly bear in the backcountry of Wyoming when she suddenly let out a yell on Monday - only to discover he had won the most coveted award in science.
"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."
Nobel announcements have not been without hiccups in the past. Poet and musician Bob Dylan ignored his 2016 Nobel literature prize for weeks, while a 2011 medicine prize was announced only to find that one of the winners had died days before.
In 2020 the Nobel committee had similar difficulties in contacting the winners of the prize for economics. When Bob Wilson’s phone rang in Stanford in the middle of the night, he unplugged it so the committee had to call his wife instead.
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Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has warned that global energy supply disruptions caused by the ongoing Middle East conflict are likely to persist.
One of the region’s largest defence and aerospace exhibitions has opened in Istanbul, bringing together companies, officials and industry experts from around the world.
The eighth European Political Community summit brought dozens of world leaders to Yerevan, signalling Europe’s deepening interest in the South Caucasus.
A 77-year-old man and a 63-year-old woman were killed on Monday (4 May), after a man drove a car into a crowd on a pedestrianised street in the the eastern German city of Leipzig, authorities said.
Iran warned Armerican forces on Monday (4 May) not to enter the Strait of Hormuz, after the U.S. said it had launched a mission to try and reopen the sea passage. Meanwhile, Iran's Foreign Minister said there was no military solution to the Middle East conflict.
The United Arab Emirate said it was dealing with missile and drone attacks from Iran for the second day in a row on Tuesday (5 May), despite denials from authorities in Tehran who threatened a "crushing response" if the UAE retaliated.
Medics are working to evacuate two people with symptoms of the deadly respiratory illness, hantavirus, from a luxury cruise ship being held off West Africa, after three people died and several others fell ill, officials have said.
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A Russian overnight missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s gas production facilities has killed five people, including two rescue workers, Ukrainian officials said, as Kyiv and Moscow exchanged competing ceasefire proposals.
Sudan’s armed forces have accused the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia of carrying out a drone attack targeting Khartoum airport, as a renewed wave of strikes shattered months of relative calm in the capital nearly three years into the civil war.
Start your day informed with the AnewZ Morning Brief. Here are the top stories for the 5th of May, covering the latest developments you need to know.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday (4 May) that meteorological monitoring equipment at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine had been damaged by a drone.
A blast at a fireworks factory in China's Hunan province has killed dozens of people and injured more than 60, prompting President Xi Jinping to call for a thorough investigation, state media reported on Tuesday.
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