Off-Grid, Asleep or Unreachable: When Nobel Prize Winners Miss the Call of a Lifetime

Nobel Prize winners sometimes miss the momentous call announcing their award due to being off-grid, asleep, or mistaking the call for spam. In 2025, immunologist Fred Ramsdell was camping without cell service and only learned of his Nobel Prize in Medicine when his wife received multiple notifications in a small town. Another laureate, who declined to be named, ignored the call from Sweden, assuming it was spam, and only discovered her award hours later when a reporter arrived at her doorstep. This is not an isolated phenomenon. In 2021, Chemistry laureate David MacMillan dismissed the initial call as a prank and even bet $1,000 that the news was fake. Similarly, a co-winner that year also ignored a text message about the award due to a misspelling of his name. In 2020, Economics laureate Paul Milgrom had turned off his phone for the night and was woken up by his co-winner, who had to knock on his door to inform him of their shared prize. Other laureates have also had unusual experiences. Abdulrazak Gurnah, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021, initially hung up on the Nobel Committee, believing it was a cold call. He only became convinced after reading the official announcement. In 2016, Bob Dylan did not r... download the app to read more