Shoes · Welcome to the Nobel Prize Laureate Collection

ID-nummer

2025.022.000

Titel

Shoes

Publik beskrivning

For Fred Ramsdell, these shoes are linked to a special memory. Here is his story:

“So, there I was, on the last day of a nearly 4-week camping trip. We’d just driven through Yellowstone National Park and had stopped the truck at an unoccupied campground to let the dogs wander around a little. As we neared ‘civilization’, my wife Laura checked her phone for the first time in over a week. And then she begins to cry out. I’m wondering what’s going on – and she comes out with a big grin and tells me I’ve won the Nobel Prize. I honestly didn’t believe her at first, but then, it was abundantly clear that I had, in fact, won the Nobel Prize. I was wearing these shoes when she told me – I’d been wearing them virtually every day for the past 4 weeks. We’d hiked hundreds of miles and driven hundreds more. We get into the mountains as often as possible, but almost always take an extended trip in September when most people have gone back to work or school. It’s a way for me to look at life, including science, from a different perspective. Back in the days when we were trying to identify and characterize the scurfy mouse, we would backpack regularly (we had younger dogs back then). Scientific progress is often a painstakingly slow process, with many false steps and delayed gratification. It’s a wonderful career, but it can also be extremely frustrating. Being able to get out of my own head helps me ‘recharge’ and sometimes see a problem from a new perspective. Hiking rarely leads to any scientific breakthrough, but, like science, it feeds my soul.”

(Scurfy mice have scaly skin, caused by a genetic defect that causes a lack of regulatory T cells. Scurfy mice were crucial to the research that led to Fred Ramsdell and Mary Brunkow receiving the Nobel Prize.)

Fred Ramsdell donated the shoes to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2025.

Pristagare

Fred Ramsdell