Immunologist Fred Ramsdell was miles from phone signal, hiking through the rugged mountains of the western United States, when he unknowingly became a Nobel laureate. The 64-year-old American scientist was announced as one of three winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine but he didn’t find out until hours later.

Fred Ramsdell, a co-founder of Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, shares the award with Mary Brunkow of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan. The Nobel Committee cited their “fundamental discoveries" explaining how the immune system controls itself- a breakthrough that has transformed understanding of autoimmune disease and cancer.

A Surprise In The Wild For Fred Ramsdell

The Nobel Committee had tr

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