A knock at the door. A call from a strange number. Here’s how the Nobel Prize winners heard they won

BERLIN AP For certain 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 amenity It would be hours before he ascertained out The Nobel Prizes are considered among the world s majority 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 Foreseen winners plan tentative news conferences or in the western U S wait up all night for the news While a few prizes might feature household names such as peace prize winner then-U S President Barack Obama or literature laureate and singer-songwriter Bob Dylan the natural science categories typically go to people whose names the general population doesn t know for decades-old research Five of this year s nine science winners were in the U S when the news broke Particular 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 Here s how several of this year s winners revealed out A knock at the door When Associated Press photographer Lindsey Wasson knocked on the door of Mary E Brunkow s Seattle home around a m local time Monday it was the scientist s dog who woke up first Zelda s barking roused Brunkow s husband Ross Colquhoun I don t think he really knew what I was there for Wasson revealed And I mentioned You know sir I think your wife just won the Nobel Prize Wasson s photographs captured Colquhoun waking up Brunkow and telling her the life-changing news She was among three winners sharing the medicine prize Don t be ridiculous she communicated 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 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 stated them to come back later Martinis needed to sleep For multiple years we would stay up on the night the physics award was declared she narrated the photographers At particular point we just decided that s nuts We ll figure it out if it s happening but let s just get our sleep She added cackling I was trying to think how I can introduce this Like Do you think you should plan a trip to Sweden She in the end woke her husband up just before a m local time GMT telling him only that the AP craved an interview I kind of knew that the Nobel Prize announcements was this week so I kind of put two and two together Martinis revealed later I opened my computer and looked under the Nobel Prize 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 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 narrated him he d just won the Nobel Prize in medicine alongside Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi I revealed No I didn t Ramsdell recounted the AP in an interview the following day from his car She declared Yes you did I have 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 didn t speak with the Nobel committee to get their congratulations until midnight He commented he was stunned and awed to receive the recognition But he has no plans to change his phone habits which he says are significant for work-life balance A phone call from Sweden The Nobel Committee calls the winners shortly before the formal announcement is made A few 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 explained he answered rather bluntly thinking it must be yet one of those telemarketing calls I m getting a lot not long ago The Nobel announcements continue with the literature prize Thursday Will that winner pick up the phone Ramakrishnan published from New York Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed AP coverage of Nobel Prizes https apnews com hub nobel-prizes Source