Fred Ramsdell was among those honoured with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine but might not know because he is somewhere in Idaho and uncontactable
Not the first time this has happened. In 1956 they gave the Nobel in Medicine to Werner Forssman for discovery of angioplasty. The problem is Forssman did the first angioplasty on himself, and he got fired from the hospital for doing so. The Nobel committee had to track him down because his career in medicine had ended after being fired.
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…
In 2020 the Nobel committee had similar difficulties in contacting the winners of the prize for economics. When Bob Wilson’s phone rang in Stanford in the middle of the night, he unplugged it so the committee had to call his wife instead.
When the committee couldn’t reach his fellow winner, Paul Milgrom, either, Wilson had to go and wake him up.
This is annoying to me. Is there seriously no better way than to call older people in the middle of the night and then act surprised when they are not immediately available?
They want to call the recipient in connection to the announcement so that the recipient hears it from the committee first hand. And since the announcement is made during the day (figure that), the call is made no matter the recipients time zone.
Yeah, I understand why it’s currently happening like that, but it’s still annoying to call at 2am and be like, “they were so hard to get on the phone!” Seems to be a recurring problem so might be worth it to have a contingency plan for winners within certain time zones, even if you just quietly inform them a few hours earlier that they should make sure they’re available at that time.
Presumably they all are informed that they’ve been nominated. They could also ask them beforehand what their preference is if they win.
2am calls are why people leave their profession.
“Its how we’ve always done it.”
Also, there is no time limit here, does it really matter if they find out a few hours or days later?
Press just wants a quote like from John Polanyi, " I hope this doesn’t turn me into a blithering idiot".
Love that for him
I read “uncontactable” as “uncontrollable” at first and I like my version much better.
Something about a Nobel prize winning immunologist uncontrollably roaming the wilds of Idaho really tickles my funny bone 😁
As someone who lives in Idaho, I can relate to this guy. It’s easy to wander the wilderness and not want to come back.
Giga Chad move