Nobel Prize: Fred Ramsdell was on ‘off-the-grid hiking trip’; received news after 20 hours

Scientist Fred Ramsdell learned he had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine while on a digital detox in the remote backcountry of the western United States.

Ramsdell, 64, an immunologist, was camping and hiking across the Rocky Mountains with his phone on airplane mode when the Nobel Committee was unable to reach him. The news finally came through on Monday afternoon (Montana time) when his wife, Laura O’Neill, suddenly regained cell service at a campground.


“I thought she had seen a grizzly bear,” Ramsdell said, recalling how O’Neill began shouting unexpectedly. Instead, she had discovered a flood of text messages all delivering the same message, “you just won the Nobel Prize!”

"I certainly didn't expect to win the Nobel Prize," he said from a hotel in Montana, as cited by the New York Times. "It never crossed my mind."

Ramsdell and his wife, Laura O’Neill, were on their way back to their hotel when they paused to fix an issue with their car. It was then that O’Neill turned on her phone and discovered dozens of congratulatory messages.

The couple had missed a 2.00 am (local time) call from the Nobel committee informing Ramsdell that he and two colleagues had been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their groundbreaking research on the immune system.

They also missed early congratulations from friends and family. In a statement, his lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, said he “was living his best life and was off the grid on a preplanned hiking trip.”

Ramsdell eventually contacted Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly, on Monday night after checking into his hotel in Livingston, Montana, almost 20 hours after the first call. Perlmann later noted it was the most difficult time he had contacting a laureate since he took up the post in 2016.

Ramsdell shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Mary Brunkow of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their groundbreaking work on the immune system. The trio will receive 11 million Swedish kronor (about £871,400), as reported by the Guardian.

The award recognizes their pioneering research on T-cells, white blood cells produced in the bone marrow that play a central role in identifying and destroying infected or cancerous cells. Often described as the body’s “security guards,” T-cells are essential for protecting against disease and maintaining immune balance.

On Tuesday, Ramsdell planned to complete the remaining six-hour drive to his fall and winter residence near Whitefish, Montana.

"I was just grateful and humbled by getting the award, super happy for the recognition of the work in general and just looking forward to sharing this with my colleagues, as well,” Ramsdell was quoted as saying by the New York Times.