Cut Off From the World, Connected to Glory, Fred Ramsdell Learns About His Nobel Win After Hiking Trip Without Wi-Fi
Immunologist Fred Ramsdell discovers he’s a Nobel laureate only after returning from a Wi-Fi-free hiking trip across the U.S. mountains.
New Delhi , Oct 08 : Imagine being deep in the wilderness, surrounded by mountains and silence no Wi-Fi, no phone signal and then discovering you’ve just won a Nobel Prize. That’s exactly what happened to immunologist Fred Ramsdell, who found out about his 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine only after returning from a remote hiking trip.
Ramsdell, 64, was trekking through the backcountry of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana with his wife, Laura O’Neill, enjoying a digital detox when the life changing news arrived. The couple had stopped to fix something on their car when Laura suddenly screamed prompting Ramsdell to fear there was a grizzly bear nearby.
But the roar was one of joy, not danger Ramsdell had just been awarded a Nobel Prize.
According to Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Committee, officials had been trying to reach Ramsdell for hours but couldn’t get through. “They were still in the wild, and there are plenty of grizzlies there,” Perlmann said. “Luckily, it was the Nobel Prize instead. He was thrilled and totally surprised.”
Speaking later from a hotel in Montana, Ramsdell admitted, “It certainly didn’t cross my mind. I was just enjoying the mountains and nature.”
Ramsdell shares the 2025 Nobel Prize with Mary Brunkow of the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University, Japan, for their groundbreaking work on T-cells the immune system’s “security guards” that identify and eliminate infected or cancerous cells.
While the committee managed to contact Sakaguchi and Brunkow, Ramsdell remained “off the grid.” His colleagues at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco joked that they suspected as much. “I figured he was backpacking in the mountains again,” said his co-founder, Jeffrey Bluestone.
This isn’t the first time Nobel officials have struggled to locate winners. In 2016, musician Bob Dylan famously ignored calls about his Literature Prize, and in 2020, economist Bob Wilson almost missed his midnight call from Stockholm.
But Ramsdell’s story stands out a perfect reminder that sometimes, life’s biggest rewards arrive when you’re least expecting them.
Even Nobel laureates, it seems, need to unplug once in a while.
