Out on a digital detox in the western US backcountry, scientist Fred Ramsdell was startled when his wife let out a yell. He feared she had spotted a grizzly bear, only to discover a far better surprise \u2013 he had won the Nobel prize in medicine.<\/p>\n
The Nobel committee had been unable to reach the immunologist, whose phone was on airplane mode as he was on a hiking and camping trip, but finally got through to the couple early on Tuesday morning, Swedish time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were still in the wild and there are plenty of grizzly bears there, so he was quite worried when she let out a yell,\u201d said Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel committee. \u201cFortunately, it was the Nobel prize. He was very happy and elated and had not expected the prize at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perlmann said Ramsdell and his wife, Laura O\u2019Neill, had been heading back to their hotel when they stopped to fix something on their car. That was the moment Ramsdell\u2019s wife switched on her mobile phone and saw the dozens of congratulatory messages.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the New York Times<\/a> from a hotel in Montana later on Tuesday, Ramsdell said he \u201ccertainly didn\u2019t expect to win the Nobel rize\u201d. The couple had been on a three-week trip that crossed the mountain ranges of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. \u201cIt never crossed my mind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ramsdell shared the 2025 prestigious prize with Mary Brunkow of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system<\/a>. They will receive a prize of 11m Swedish kronor (about \u00a3871,400).<\/p>\n The award celebrates a fundamental discovery relating to T-cells, an important player in the immune system. T-cells are a type of white blood cell, produced in the bone marrow, that help to flag invading microbes and kill infected or cancerous cells. They are often referred to as \u201csecurity guards\u201d.<\/p>\n At the time of the initial announcement on Monday, Perlmann revealed he had managed to reach only Sakaguchi. \u201cWe have their phone numbers, but they\u2019re probably on silent mode,\u201d he said. Brunkow was later contacted, but Ramsdell, 64, remained incommunicado.<\/p>\n A spokesperson from Ramsdell\u2019s San Francisco-based lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, said<\/a> later on Monday that he was \u201cliving his best life\u201d and was \u201coff the grid\u201d.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend of Ramsdell and co-founder of the lab, said he had \u201cbeen trying to get a hold of him\u201d but thought \u201che may be backpacking\u201d.<\/p>\n Contacting Nobel prize winners across the globe has been a continuing frustration. The musician Bob Dylan ignored his 2016 Nobel literature prize for days<\/a>, while the 2011 medicine prize was announced only to find that one of the winners had died days before.<\/p>\n