Doorbell Camera Captures Moment Nobel Prize Winner Is Told by Fellow Recipient He's Won

“Paul, it’s Bob Wilson. You’ve won the Nobel Prize.” This is how Paul Milgrom discovered in the middle of the night on October 12 that he’d won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Milgrom was awarded the prize with fellow Stanford University economist, and neighbor, Robert Wilson.

Footage from Milgrom’s doorbell camera shows Wilson, with wife Mary, knocking on Milgrom’s door at around 2 am to let him know the news after the Nobel committee was unable to reach him.

In a statement, Stanford said Wilson too had been caught off guard by the news and had unplugged his home phone thinking it was “an incoming spam call”, resulting in the committee having to contact Mary instead.

Milgrom and Wilson won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats". Credit: Paul Milgrom via Storyful