Bob Dylan to Amartya Sen: Laureates who went missing for the Nobel announcement

By ​ Apoorva Puranik

Richard Ernst
High-flying winner
Richard Ernst won the prize in Chemistry in 1991 and, as it happens each year, the editor of Nobelprize.org, Adam Smith called him to share the news and get an interview. However, Ernst was on a flight from Moscow to New York when the call came.

The scientist got a shock when the captain came to him and broke the news.

“I had to go to the cockpit and I was speaking on the radio to Smith and my family,“ Ernst said.


Nobel laureate Richard Ernst delivering lecture at BBD (Image: BCCL)

Konstantin Novoselov
Working it
Adam Smith must have made several life-changing phone calls. But the one call he ma changing phone calls. But the one call he made to Konstantin Novoselov is probably the most hilarious. When Smith called the 2010 winner of Nobel Prize in Physics to give him the news, he was in the middle of taking measurements and wasn't exactly thrilled to be disturbed. His first words, according to Smith, were “You're basically saying I should stop my experiments now?“


Konstantin Novoselov won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 (Image: Twitter)

Dorris Lessing
Too cool for school
Then aged 87, the late Dorris Lessing discovered she'd won the Nobel prize in 2007 when she found herself surrounded by reporters outside her house in London. Just back from grocery shopping, her reaction on hearing the news, shouted out by reporters, was priceless.Rolling her eyes, she said, “Oh Christ!“ and gave the faintest of chuckles, before going back into her home.

Alice Munro
You've got mail
Alice Munro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, doesn't have to recall the moment of her win. She can replay it for herself as many times as she wants. Apparently, when the Swedish Academy tried calling her with the news of her win, she wasn't around to take the call. After trying a few times, they finally left her a voice mail. The Academy also went on to tweet ,“@Nobelprize.org is trying to reach #AliceMunro for our traditional phone interview, still voice mail.#NobelPrize“.


Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013 (Image: Twitter)

Amartya Sen
Scary surprise
Amartya Sen learnt that he had won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 in the most frightening of ways. Sen was in New York to attend a memorial service when a phone call at 5.30 am woke him up, startling him. Turned out, it was a call from Stockholm, not home. “My first thought was something terrible must have happened, someone has turned ill, or something worse than that...I thanked him and said `I needed a cup of coffee'“, Sen later said in an interview.


Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 1998 (Image: BCCL)