Martin Chalfie, Columbia University

Co-Recipient, 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

If you’re fortunate enough to do good work, people do this terrible thing to you — they start saying, “Hey, you might get the Nobel Prize.” Then, when the first week in October rolls around, you lose a little sleep. Last October, I didn’t sleep well the night before they announced the medicine prize. But no call came. They announce the chemistry prize two days later.

Well, on that night, I heard this phone ringing in the distance but assumed it was a neighbor’s. So I woke at 10 after 6 the next morning and assumed the chemistry prize had gone to someone else. I then opened my laptop and went to Nobelprize.org to see who the schnook was who’d gotten it. And there I saw my name along — along with Osamu Shimomura’s and Roger Tsien’s.

I was the schnook!

