How this year’s Nobel laureates heard they won – and why some ignored the call

For some of this year’s Nobel Prize recipients, life-changing news came with an early-morning knock on the door, while for others, it was a long-awaited phone call acknowledging discoveries made decades ago.

For example, an award winner in the medical field, reportedly on vacation in Yellowstone National Park, remained completely without cellular service, unaware of his monumental achievement for several hours.

The Nobel Prizes are among the world’s most prestigious awards, celebrating breakthroughs in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, economics and peace.

The winners join an illustrious circle of award winners, from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa.

Although the announcement may sometimes be anticipated, leading to makeshift press conferences or all-night vigils in anticipation, the nature of the recipients often varies.

Although some awards may honor household names – such as Barack Obama, the 2009 Peace Prize winner, or singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, who received the literary prize in 2016 – natural science categories typically recognize individuals lesser known to the general public, often for research conducted several decades earlier.

Five of this year’s nine science winners were in the US when the news broke. Some were sleeping deeply.

two winners Japanseven hours ahead StockholmWas awake and working when a call came from a Swedish number. Someone thought he was a telemarketer.

Wednesday’s chemistry prize was the first time this year that the Nobel Committee reached out to all three winners before the formal announcement.

Here are some of this year’s winners:

knock on the door

When Associated Press photographer Lindsay Wasson knocked on Mary E. Brunko’s door seattle While returning home on Monday morning, the scientist’s dog was the first to wake up. zeldaBrunko’s husband, Ross Colquhoun, became agitated because of the barking.

“I don’t think he really knew what I was there for,” Wasson said. “And I said, ‘You know sir, I think your wife just won nobel prize,

Wasson’s photos captured Colquhoun waking up Brunko and telling her life-changing news: She was one of three winners to share the 2025 medicine prize.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she told her husband.

But it was true. The trio, in two decades of research, uncovered a key pathway the body uses to keep the immune system in check, called peripheral immune tolerance. Experts call the findings important for understanding autoimmune diseases type 1 diabetesRheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

The next day, AP photographer Mark J. terrill and damien go to dovarganes Santa Barbara, CaliforniaTo find physicist John Martinis before the sun rises. His wife, Jean, opened the door and told him to come back later: Martinis needed to sleep.

“For many years, we would stay awake at night when the physics prize was announced,” he told photographers. “At some point we decided this was crazy. If that’s what’s happening we’ll figure it out, but let’s just get our sleep.”

She laughed: “I was trying to think of how I could present it. Like, ‘Do you think you should plan a trip? sweden,

She eventually woke her husband just before 6 a.m. local time (1300 GMT) and simply told him that the AP wanted an interview.

Martinis later said, “I knew the Nobel Prize would be announced this week, so I put two and two together.” “I opened my computer and looked under Nobel Prize 2025 and saw my picture with Michelle Devoret and John Clark. So I was in shock.”

The trio won a physics prize for their research on the strange world of subatomic quantum tunneling, which powers everyday digital communications and computing.

Martinis will get that trip to Sweden. The awards ceremony is in Stockholm on 10 December.

a march interrupted

Everyone except Fred Ramsdale knew he had just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Ramsdell was on a backpacking trip on Monday, hiking through Yellowstone National Park with his wife and two dogs, Larkin and Megan. He kept his cellphone in airplane mode as he often does on family trips.

A few hours later, as they passed through a small town, his wife started screaming as notifications started coming on her phone. He told her that he had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Brunko and Shimon Sakaguchi.

“I said, ‘No, I didn’t,'” Ramsdell told the AP in an interview from his car the next day. “She said, ‘Yes, you did. I have 200 text messages saying you won the Nobel Prize.'”

Later on Monday, Ramsdell drove Montana To connect to hotel Wi-Fi and call friends and colleagues. He did not speak to the Nobel Committee until midnight to receive congratulations.

He said that he was shocked and surprised to receive this honour. But he has no plans to change his phone habits, which he says are important for work-life balance.

a phone call from sweden

The Nobel Committee calls the winners shortly before the formal announcement. Some people ignore Swedish numbers – like Brunko, who assumed the call made before dawn was spam.

When his phone rang on Wednesday, chemistry winner Susumu Kitagawa was suspicious. He said he answered “rather frankly, thinking it must be one of those telemarketing calls I’ve been getting a lot of lately.”

The Nobel announcement continues with the literature awards on Thursday. Will that winner pick up the phone?