When Nobel Prize Winners Miss The Call: How Laureates Discovered Their Life-Changing News

In Berlin, Nobel Prize announcements created quite a stir this year, with recipients learning about their prestigious honors in remarkably different ways.

Some laureates were awakened by early morning knocks on their doors, while others received long-anticipated phone calls recognizing discoveries made decades earlier.

One medicine prize winner, however, was vacationing in Yellowstone National Park without cell service and remained unaware of his achievement for hours.

Nobel Prizes represent the pinnacle of recognition for achievements across medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, economics, and peace. Winners join an illustrious group that includes luminaries like Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa.

While some recipients anticipate potential wins—organizing tentative press conferences or staying awake through the night in western US time zones—many are caught completely off guard.

Unlike the occasional household names who receive literature or peace prizes (such as former US President Barack Obama in 2009 or singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in 2016), natural science categories typically honor individuals unknown to the general public for groundbreaking research conducted decades ago.

Five of this year's nine science laureates were in the United States when their wins were announced, with several sound asleep.

Two winners in Japan, operating seven hours ahead of Stockholm, were working when calls from Swedish numbers arrived. One mistook the call for telemarketing.

Wednesday's chemistry prize marked the first time this year that the Nobel committee successfully contacted all three winners before making the formal announcement.

When Associated Press photographer Lindsey Wasson knocked on Mary E. Brunkow's Seattle home around 4 a.m. local time on Monday, her dog Zelda barked first, waking Brunkow's husband, Ross Colquhoun.

Wasson explained, "Sir, I think your wife just won the Nobel Prize."

Wasson's photographs captured the moment Colquhoun woke Brunkow to share the life-changing news that she was among three winners sharing the 2025 medicine prize.

"Don't be ridiculous," Brunkow initially told her husband, unable to believe it.

The trio had been recognized for research conducted two decades ago that uncovered a key pathway—peripheral immune tolerance—that regulates the immune system. Experts consider these findings crucial for understanding autoimmune diseases like Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus.

The following day, AP photographers Mark J. Terrill and Damian Dovarganes traveled to Santa Barbara, California, seeking physicist John Martinis before sunrise. His wife Jean answered the door, asking them to return later as Martinis needed sleep.

"For many years, we would stay up on the night the physics award was announced," she explained. "At some point we just decided, that's nuts. We'll figure it out if it's happening, but let's just get our sleep."

She added with a laugh, "I was trying to think how I can introduce this. Like, 'Do you think you should plan a trip to Sweden?'"

Jean eventually woke her husband just before 6 a.m. local time, mentioning only that AP wanted an interview.

"I kind of knew that the Nobel Prize announcements was this week, so I kind of put two and two together," Martinis recounted. "I opened my computer and looked under the Nobel Prize 2025 and saw my picture along with Michel Devoret and John Clarke. So I was kind of in shock."

The trio won the physics prize for their research on quantum tunneling in the subatomic realm, work that advances everyday digital communications and computing power.

Martinis will indeed travel to Sweden for the December 10 award ceremony in Stockholm.

Meanwhile, Fred Ramsdell seemed to be the last person to learn he had won the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Ramsdell was on a backpacking trip, driving through Yellowstone National Park with his wife and two dogs, Larkin and Megan. He had kept his phone in airplane mode as he typically does during family vacations.

Hours later, while passing through a small town, his wife began screaming as notifications flooded her phone, informing him he'd won the Nobel Prize in medicine alongside Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi.

"I said, 'No, I didn't,'" Ramsdell told AP in an interview the next day from his car. "She said, 'Yes, you did. I have 200 text messages that say you won the Nobel Prize.'"

Later Monday, Ramsdell drove to a Montana hotel to connect to Wi-Fi and call friends and colleagues. He didn't speak with the Nobel committee until midnight.

While stunned and awed by the recognition, Ramsdell has no plans to change his phone habits, which he considers important for work-life balance.

The Nobel Committee calls winners shortly before formal announcements. Some ignore calls from Swedish numbers—like Brunkow, who assumed the pre-dawn call was spam.

When his phone rang Wednesday, chemistry winner Susumu Kitagawa responded "rather bluntly, thinking it must be yet one of those telemarketing calls I'm getting a lot recently."

The Nobel announcements continue with the literature prize on Thursday, leaving many wondering whether that winner will answer the phone.