The US economist Robert Wilson had to walk to his fellow Stanford University colleague Paul Milgrom's house at 2:15 am to tell him that the two have won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
A video released by Stanford University has gone viral in which Wilson, 83, is ringing his 72-year-old Nobel partner's doorbell and knocking on his door in the middle of the night.
The #NobelPrize committee couldn't reach Paul Milgrom to share the news that he won, so his fellow winner and neighbor Robert Wilson knocked on his door in the middle of the night. pic.twitter.com/MvhxZcgutZ
— Stanford University (@Stanford) October 12, 2020
The video was captured by a security camera outside Paul's house. The video shows Wilson and a woman, reportedly his wife, walking to Milgrom's door and ringing the bell.
"Paul", his Nobel partner says while knocking on the door.
"You won the...you won the Nobel Prize," Wilson says looking into the security camera. "And so, they're trying to reach you, but they cannot. They don't seem to have a number for you," Wilson adds.
"We gave them your cellphone number," Wilson's wife says. "Yeah, I have? Wow," Milgrom responds.
"I was asleep and the doorbell rang at 2 in the morning. And then I picked up the phone - it's a video doorbell. And I saw Bob's face and he was knocking at the door, telling me that they were trying to call me and that we had won a Nobel Prize, which is pretty, pretty good news," Milgrom told Reuters.
Milgrom and Wilson won the prize for their contributions to auction theory. According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the duo has designed auction formats for goods and services that are difficult to sell in a traditional way, such as radio frequencies. Milgrom and Wilson will share 10 million Swedish kroner (Rs 8,35,01,190) in prize money.