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US scientist Dr Fred Ramsdell had a shock after his wife screamed while on a three-week hiking trip. While speaking to the BBC, Ramsdell said he initially thought his Laura O'Neill might have encountered some wild animals. She informed him about winning the Nobel Prize. Ramsdell, 64, is a scientific adviser for San Francisco-based Sonoma Biotherapeutics.

The scientist said he did not believe and thought she was joking, but later, she showed him the flurry of text messages she received from her friends and relatives. “She said, ‘You won the Nobel Prize.’ And I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ And she said, ‘Yes, you did. I have 200 text messages that says you won a Nobel Prize’ and I’m like, ’That’s unbelievable,” Ramsdell said.

Ramsdell's phone had been on airplane mode  

According to the report, Ramsdell’s phone had been on airplane mode when the prestigious committee tried to contact him. Then the committee contacted his wife to convey the message. Later, the couple drove down to a small town in southern Montana in search of a good signal.

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"By then, it was probably three o'clock in the afternoon here, I called the Nobel Committee. Of course, they were in bed, because it was probably one o'clock in the morning there," Dr Ramsell told BBC.

Eventually, the immunologist was able to reach his fellow laureates, friends and officials at the Nobel Assembly - 20 hours after they first tried to reach him. "So it was an interesting day," he said.

Most difficult attempt to contact a winner: Nobel Assembly official

Dr Thomas Perlmann, the secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly, told the New York Times it was the most difficult attempt to contact a winner since he assumed the role in 2016. While the committee was trying to reach him, he "was living his best life and was off the grid on a preplanned hiking trip," a spokesperson for his lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, said.

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Ramsdell “is one of the most humble people you’ll ever meet,” Jeff Bluestone, CEO of Sonoma Biotherapeutics, told AP. “It’s going to be great for us to toot his horn for him.”