Nobel Prize committee couldn't reach Medicine award winner, Fred Ramsdell. He was hiking without signal in US mountains

It's the Nobel Prize season. This year’s Nobel Prize announcements began on 6 October and will continue till 13 October.

On Monday, Fred Ramsdell, a US-based immunologist, became one of this year's winners, sharing the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, US, and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their pioneering discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system.

But there was a hurdle before one of the winners could be informed. When the Nobel Committee representatives attempted to contact Ramsdell, they failed, according to a report in The Guardian.

The Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet gives the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The prize is awarded for significant scientific discoveries in medicine and physiology, with the selection made by the Nobel Assembly

Ramsdell is ‘living his best life’ on an ‘off the grid’ hiking foray, a spokesperson from his San Francisco-based lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, told The Guardian. As per Ramsdell's colleagues, his solitary trip has left him beyond the reach of phone or email.

Phone in Airplane Mode

Ramsdell shared Monday’s 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.

Jeffrey Bluestone, Ramsdell’s friend and co-founder of the Sonoma Biotherapeutics lab, was quoted in The Guardian as saying that the researcher deserves credit, but he can’t reach him either.

Ramsdell’s phone was reportedly on airplane mode as he was on a hiking and camping trip

“I have been trying to get a hold of him myself. I think he may be backpacking in the backcountry in Idaho,” Bluestone told news agency AFP. Idaho is a northwestern US state known for mountainous landscapes, and vast swaths of protected wilderness and outdoor recreation areas

Issue with the other winner, too

The Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute Medical University, according to The Guardian, also had issued a statement reaching out to Brunkow, the co-winner, based on the US West Coast. But eventually got hold 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.

After initially being unable to reach out to the winner, the Nobel committee was also unable to contact Brunkow, but they eventually made contact with 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.

Finally contacted

Finally, the Nobel committee got through Ramsdell on Tuesday morning, Swedish time. “They were still in the wild and there are plenty of grizzly bears there, so he was quite worried when she let out a yell,” Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel committee, said in The Guardian.

“Fortunately, it was the Nobel Prize. He was very happy and elated and had not expected the prize at all.”

Perlmann said Ramsdell and his wife, Laura O’Neill, had been heading back to their hotel when they stopped to fix something on their car. That was the moment Ramsdell’s wife switched on her mobile phone and saw the dozens of congratulatory messages.

Speaking to the New York Times later on Tuesday, Ramsdell said he “certainly didn’t expect to win the Nobel rize”.

The couple had been on a three-week trip that crossed the mountain ranges of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. “It never crossed my mind,” he said.

In 2020, the Nobel committee faced similar difficulties in contacting the winners of the economics prize. When Bob Wilson’s phone rang in the middle of the night at Stanford, he unplugged it, so the committee had to call his wife instead.

Who is Fred Ramsdell?

Fred Ramsdell is an immunologist who earned his doctorate in microbiology and immunology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1987. He is the Chief Scientific Officer at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, a company based in San Francisco that focuses on developing engineered regulatory T cell therapies.

Ramsdell's work, alongside Brunkow, was central to linking the FOXP3 gene to immune regulation. “Fred Ramsdell’s research on the immune system has transformed our understanding of autoimmune diseases and led to treatments that are saving lives around the world,” said UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk.

(With agency inputs)