The Nobel Committee cannot inform American scientist Fred Ramsdell that he has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine. The researcher went on a hiking trip without communication in the mountains of Idaho.
This is reported by The Guardian.
Ramsdell won the Nobel Prize together with Mary Brankov and Shimon Sakaguchi. The scientists were honored for discoveries that helped to understand how the immune system works. But it seems that Ramsdell himself does not yet know that he has become a laureate: he is currently “off the grid” and is not answering calls or messages.
His colleague and friend Jeffrey Bluestone says he also tried unsuccessfully to contact him:
"Heʼs probably backpacking somewhere in the Idaho wilderness," he said.
The committee also had difficulty reaching another laureate, Mary Brankov, due to the time difference between the United States and Sweden, but eventually they were able to connect.
“I just asked them to call me back when they could,” joked Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann.
Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of regulatory T cells, the immune systemʼs "guardians" that prevent it from attacking its own body. Their research has opened up a new direction in medicine and given rise to potential treatments that are already being tested in clinics.
Shimon Sakaguchi first discovered these cells back in 1995. And in 2001, Mary Brankov and Fred Ramsdell took the next step by confirming how they work.
This is not the first time the committee has failed to notify the laureates immediately. In 2020, calls to the winners of the economics prize were similarly fruitless—until one of them, Bob Wilson, went and woke up his colleague Paul Milgrom to break the news.
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