When the 2025 Nobel Medicine Committee attempted to contact Fred Ramsdell, the American scientist was literally out of touch. Immersed in the wild nature of Montana, engaged in a long trek, he had put his cell phone on airplane mode to enjoy the peace of silence.
No one, not even his colleagues at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, could reach him. His friend and CEO of the lab, Jeffrey Bluestone, had speculated that it was “backpacking somewhere in Idaho”, unaware that the future Nobel Prize winner was actually walking through the valleys of Montana.
Then, suddenly, here’s the twist: his wife, Laura O’Neill, was screaming in the campsite. He thought she’d spotted a bear, but the reality was even more surprising: her phone had regained signal and was inundated with congratulatory messages.
Only then did Ramsdell discover that he had just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, together with Mary Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi, for their fundamental discoveries on the immune system and regulatory T cells (Tregs).
A prize discovered twenty hours late
The scientist said he didn’t believe it immediately. Only after reactivating his phone did he find the missed call from the Stockholm committee. He tried to call back, but it was already late at night in Sweden and General Secretary Thomas Perlmann was asleep. The two managed to speak only twenty hours later, when Ramsdell reached a hotel with a stable signal. A delay that made the announcement even more memorable: a Nobel awarded, metaphorically, in the mountains and woods of North America.
Mary Brunkow and the ignored phone call
But he is not the only one to have had communication problems with the committee. Even my colleague Mary Brunkow, co-winner of the award, fared no better. When he saw a Swedish number on the display, he thought it was spam and turned off the phone and went back to sleep. Only hours later did she realize that that call announced the highest scientific recognition in the world.
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