Fred Ramsdell, one of this year’s Nobel laureates in Medicine, spent over half a day unaware of his win — simply because he was out hiking, far from any cell signal.
The 64-year-old immunologist, honored for groundbreaking research on how the immune system distinguishes harmful microbes from the body’s own cells, was deep in the Rocky Mountains when the announcement was made on Monday.
His wife broke the news after turning on her phone at a campground in Montana and letting out a loud scream. Ramsdell admitted he feared something was wrong — possibly a bear sighting — before realizing the real reason for her excitement.
“I was completely caught off guard,” he told the New York Times. “Winning the Nobel Prize wasn’t even on my radar.”
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Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Assembly, said officials couldn’t reach Ramsdell until early Tuesday. “They were still in the wilderness, surrounded by bears,” he said. “But once he heard, he was thrilled.”
Ramsdell, a scientific adviser at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, has long been recognized for his work on immune regulation. His colleagues joked that he was “living his best life” off the grid when the world was trying to track him down.
“I’ve been trying to reach him myself,” said his friend and lab co-founder Jeffrey Bluestone. “He’s probably somewhere backpacking in Idaho.”
It took a bit of nature and a delayed phone signal for Ramsdell to learn that his quiet mountain getaway had coincided with one of the biggest moments of his career.
