Overview

• Frederick Ramsdell was named a co-winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries on immune system regulation.
• He missed the pre-dawn notification call while hiking with his phone in airplane mode during a three-week trip across mountain ranges.
• He learned of the award more than 10 hours after the announcement, finally hearing the news at a Montana campsite on the afternoon of October 6.
• Karolinska Institutet’s Thomas Perlmann said contact was made about 20 hours after the initial call, describing the delay as unmatched in his 16 years overseeing the process.
• Ramsdell shares the prize with Mary E. Blanckow and Osaka University’s Sakaguchi, and his company said he was happily off-grid when the news broke.