Nobel Committee finally finds its laureate in mountains

Fred Ramsdell, who won the Nobel Prize for his research on the immune system, says he usually puts his phone on airplane mode when he's on vacation and doesn't expect any important calls, The New York Times reports.

He was camping in Montana on Monday afternoon after a few days of hiking and camping in the Rocky Mountains when his wife, Laura O'Neill, suddenly screamed.

At first, Fred thought she had seen a grizzly bear. But no, her phone just started ringing again, and Laura saw a stream of messages with the same news:

"You just won the Nobel Prize!" she exclaimed. "That can't be," Dr. Ramsdell replied, remembering that his phone had been on airplane mode the entire time. "But I have two hundred messages, and they all say the same thing!" - his wife insisted.

The couple missed the 2 am night call - just as the Nobel Committee was trying to announce that Ramsdell and two other scientists had been awarded the 2025 Medicine Prize for their discoveries in the immune system.

They also missed the congratulations from friends and colleagues. His lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, simply commented:

"He's living life to the fullest - and he was completely off the network, enjoying a long-planned hike in the mountains."

"I definitely didn't expect to win the Nobel Prize," he said from a hotel in Montana. "It never even crossed my mind. I try to spend as much time in the mountains as I can," he says. "We always go to the most remote places," he adds, noting that he and his wife are always on the lookout for bison, elk, deer, or eagles.

When the Ramsdells arrived at a hotel in Livingston, Montana, on Monday evening, the doctor was finally able to speak with Thomas Perlmann, the secretary general of the Nobel Assembly. This was about 20 hours after Perlmann first tried to reach him by phone. In a statement to reporters, Perlmann admitted that since he took office in 2016, it has never been so difficult to contact the laureate.