Hiking Nobel laureate finally learns of his prize

David P. — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 15:07:29 +0000

New York (AFP) – After an amusing game of phone tag, the Nobel Prize committee on Tuesday finally spoke to laureate Fred Ramsdell, who was hiking “off the grid” when the news broke. The researcher told The New York Times he was wrapping up a three-week nature trek on Monday with his phone in airplane mode when the Nobel organizers, media outlets, and friends were fruitlessly trying to reach him. He finally found out that he was a Nobel Prize winner in medicine from his wife. She said her phone was flooded with messages when she regained cell service as the pair made a stop in Montana, the end of the vacation that included hiking and camping across mountains there as well as Idaho and Wyoming.

The paper said Ramsdell had tried returning the call of Thomas Perlmann, the Nobel Assembly secretary-general, but it was too late in Sweden. They finally connected Tuesday morning. On Monday, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, Ramsdell’s lab, had told AFP the scientist was “living his best life” on an “off the grid” hiking journey. Ramsdell’s friend and colleague Jeffrey Bluestone, who co-founded the lab, told AFP he couldn’t reach him either.

Ramsdell shares the prize with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington, and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system. The 64-year-old told the Times he tries to spend as much time in the mountains as he can. The laureate said he was “grateful and humbled” by the award, and “looking forward to sharing this with my colleagues.”

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Unreachable Nobel winner hiking ‘off the grid’

Andrew M. — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 22:04:40 +0000

San Francisco (United States) (AFP) – One of this year’s Nobel winners is a leading medical researcher who also offers a shining example of work-life balance — so much so that he might not know he won. Fred Ramsdell was among those honored Monday with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine, but he’s currently “living his best life” on an “off the grid” hiking foray, a spokesperson from his San Francisco-based lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, told AFP.

Ramsdell shared the prestigious prize with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington, and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system. But the laureate’s digital detox means the Nobel committee has been unable to reach him and break the news. Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend of Ramsdell’s and co-founder of the lab, said the researcher deserves credit but he can’t reach him, either. “I have been trying to get a hold of him myself. I think he may be backpacking in the backcountry in Idaho,” Bluestone told AFP.

The Nobel committee also hit a roadblock trying to reach Brunkow — both researchers are based on the US West Coast, which is nine hours behind Stockholm — but eventually got ahold of her. “I asked them to, if they have a chance, call me back,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel committee, at the press conference announcing the winners.

The three won the prize for research that identified the immune system’s “security guards,” called regulatory T-cells. Their work concerns “peripheral immune tolerance” that prevents the immune system from harming the body, and has led to a new field of research and the development of potential medical treatments now being evaluated in clinical trials. Sakaguchi, 74, made the first key find in 1995, discovering a previously unknown class of immune cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases. Brunkow, born in 1961 and now a senior project manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell, a 64-year-old senior advisor at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, made the other key discovery in 2001.

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Hiking Nobel laureate finally learns of his prize

Unreachable Nobel winner hiking ‘off the grid’