Nobel committee reaches U.S. laureate Fred Ramsdell a day after he went hiking without a phone

The Nobel committee managed to contact U.S. physiology and medicine laureate Fred Ramsdell a day after he went on a hike without his phone, Reuters reported.

Ramsdell and his wife were returning to their hotel when their car broke down. His wife turned on her phone and discovered the messages from the committee.

“They were still out in the wild, with grizzly bears around, and [Ramsdell] got quite alarmed when she screamed — but luckily it was because of the Nobel Prize,” said Thomas Perlmann, the Nobel Assembly’s secretary-general.

Earlier, AFP reported that Ramsdell had been unreachable because he was traveling across the United States while practicing “digital detox.” He shared the prize with Mary E. Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi for discoveries on regulatory T-cells — key immune components that prevent the body from attacking its own tissues.