Your phone rings, and it’s a number from Sweden. Do you answer? A Nobel Prize winner didn’t

For some Nobel Prize winners this year the news came with a knock at the door before dawn. For others it was a long-awaited phone call honoring a discovery made decades ago. One of the medicine prize winners meanwhile was on vacation in Yellowstone National Park without cellular service. It would be hours before he found out.

The Nobel Prizes are considered among the worlds most prestigious honors for achievements in medicine physics chemistry literature economics and peace. The winners join the pantheon of Nobel laureates from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa. Sometimes the award is anticipated. Potential winners plan tentative news conferences or in the western US wait up all night for the news. While some prizes might feature household names — such as 2009 peace prize winner then-US President Barack Obama or 2016 literature laureate and singer-songwriter Bob Dylan — the natural science categories typically go to people whose names the general public doesnt know for decades-old research. Five of this years nine science winners were in the US when the news broke. Some were fast asleep. Two winners in Japan seven hours ahead of Stockholm were awake and working when the call came from a Swedish number. One thought it was a telemarketer. Wednesdays chemistry prize was the first time this year that the Nobel committee reached all three winners ahead of the formal announcement. Heres how some of this years winners found out: A knock at the door When Associated Press photographer Lindsey Wasson knocked on the door of Mary E. Brunkows Seattle home around 4 a.m. local time Monday it was the scientists dog who woke up first. Zeldas barking roused Brunkows husband Ross Colquhoun. I dont think he really knew what I was there for Wasson said. And I said You know sir I think your wife just won the Nobel Prize. Wassons photographs captured Colquhoun waking up Brunkow and telling her the life-changing news: She was among three winners sharing the 2025 medicine prize. Dont be ridiculous she told her husband. But it was true. The trio had in research dating back two decades uncovered a key pathway the body uses to keep the immune system in check called peripheral immune tolerance. Experts called the findings critical to understanding autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

The following day AP photographers Mark J. Terrill and Damian Dovarganes headed to Santa Barbara California to find physicist John Martinis before the sun rose. His wife Jean answered the door and told them to come back later: Martinis needed to sleep. For many years we would stay up on the night the physics award was announced she told the photographers. At some point we just decided thats nuts. Well figure it out if its happening but lets just get our sleep. She added laughing: I was trying to think how I can introduce this. Like Do you think you should plan a trip to Sweden? She finally woke her husband up just before 6 a.m. local time (1300 GMT) telling him only that the 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 said later. 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 the weird world of subatomic quantum tunneling that advances the power of everyday digital communications and computing. Martinis will get that trip to Sweden. The Dec. 10 award ceremony is in Stockholm. A hike interrupted Everyone but Fred Ramsdell seemed to know he had just won the Nobel Prize in medicine. Ramsdell was away on a backpacking trip Monday driving through Yellowstone National Park with his wife and two dogs Larkin and Megan. He kept his cellphone in airplane mode as he often does on family trips. As they drove through a small town hours later his wife started screaming as notifications flooded her phone. She told him hed just won the Nobel Prize in medicine alongside Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi. I said No I didnt Ramsdell said in an interview the following 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 didnt speak with the Nobel committee to get their congratulations until midnight. He said he was stunned and awed to receive the recognition. But he has no plans to change his phone habits which he says are important for work-life balance. A phone call from Sweden The Nobel Committee calls the winners shortly before the formal announcement is made. Some ignore the Swedish number — like Brunkow who assumed the pre-dawn call was spam. When his phone rang Wednesday chemistry winner Susumu Kitagawa was skeptical. He said he answered rather bluntly thinking it must be yet one of those telemarketing calls Im getting a lot recently.