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Comment by dangle1 | Hacker News Reader

Funny anecdote that Dr. Brunkow thought she was being spammed when the Nobel Committee tried to inform her:

>Brunkow, meanwhile, got the news of her prize from an AP photographer who came to her Seattle home in the early hours of the morning. She said she had ignored the earlier call from the Nobel Committee. “My phone rang and I saw a number from Sweden and thought: ‘That’s just, that’s spam of some sort.’”

https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2025/10/sc...

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Am I understanding correctly that this Nobel prize is for work that was completed over 20 years ago? I'm not a biologist but it sounds like they discovered regulatory T cells together, which sounds relatively major. Is it typical for a Nobel prize to lag that kind of discovery for decades? Or is it only now that we understand how major the discovery was? Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the discovery and the timeline.

Yes, many Nobel prizes are awarded for work that was completed decades ago in part to ensure that the work passes the test of time.

Highs had a delay of 49 years from paper to prize, though he got the prize the year after his theory was experimentally confirmed.

At least in Physics, on average every year there is more than one discovery that is worth a Nobel prize. So there is an increasing backlog of people who should get a Nobel prize. You can look at the list and check that people in the 1920s got their prize about 15 years after their work [1]. But recently people have been getting it about 30-40 years after.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Phy...

They got Nobel prize because they made most important discovery than all other living scientists.

I can’t say I would react too differently. There are so many emails or phone calls claiming you’ve won a big award or sum of money that end up being scams.

Meanwhile, Fred Ramsdell probably still doesn’t know he’s won it because he’s backpacking in Idaho.

He’ll be in for a surprise when he switches his phone back on.

That's Idaho, USA for anyone who lives in one of the 194 other countries in the world (yes we do exist!)

According to Gemini, the place name Idaho is unique to the USA.

There's also Idaho, Ohio, USA, home to one of the jankiest looking post offices I've ever seen. It looks like a dilapidated outhouse.

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