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.

- By STEFANIE DAZIO and ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN

OSAKA UNIVERSITY professor Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi, right, receives flowers at a news conference in Suita, near Osaka, western Japan, Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, after he won the Nobel Prize in medicine. (AP)

(AP)

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 world’s 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-U.S. 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 doesn't know, for decades-old research.

Five of this year’s nine science winners were in the U.S. 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.

Wednesday's chemistry prize was the first time this year that the Nobel committee reached all three winners ahead of the formal announcement.