Overview

• Officials spoke with Fred Ramsdell on Tuesday roughly 20 hours after the initial missed call from Nobel Assembly secretary-general Thomas Perlmann, who called the outreach the hardest since 2016.
• Ramsdell had kept his phone in airplane mode during a three-week hiking trip, leaving organizers, media, and friends unable to reach him after Monday’s announcement.
• He learned he had won when his wife, Laura O’Neill, saw hundreds of messages once her phone reconnected and told him he had the Nobel.
• Ramsdell shares the 2025 Physiology or Medicine prize with Mary Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi for discoveries on how the immune system is kept from attacking healthy cells.
• Sonoma Biotherapeutics said he was enjoying a disconnected trail excursion, while Ramsdell, 64, described himself as grateful and honored and noted he tries to spend as much time as possible in the mountains.