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When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Monday that American economists Paul Milgrom and Bob Wilson had won the Nobel Prize in economics, both men were fast asleep in their beds in Stanford, California.
Finally, the committee managed to contact Wilson to break the news. But Milgrom was asleep and no one could contact him. So it was up to Wilson, who happens to be Milgrom’s neighbor, to go to his former student’s house in his pajamas to tell him the happy news that he had won the $ 1 million prize.
Milgrom’s security camera footage captured the moment Wilson arrived in the dead of night to deliver the news. In the recording, Wilson and his wife, Mary, walk to the door, Mary grabbing her phone.
“Paul,” says Wilson, tapping the intercom and knocking several times.
Finally, Milgrom responds, “Hello?”
Paul, this is Bob Wilson. You have won the Nobel Prize, ”he says with economy and moderation. “And then they are trying to contact you. But they can’t. They don’t seem to have a number for you. “
Mary intervenes: “We gave them your cell phone number.”
“Yes, I have? Wow,” says Milgrom. “OK.”
“Will you answer your phone?” says Maria, and laughs.
A few minutes earlier, according to Stanford University, Wilson “had also been surprised by the news.” When his home phone rang in the early hours, he unplugged it. So the Nobel committee called Mary.
Later, Milgrom explained how things unfolded from his perspective.
“I was asleep and the doorbell rang at two 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 on the door, telling me that they were trying to call me and that we had won a Nobel Prize, which is nice, very good news, ” he told Reuters.
The Stanford scholars won the Nobel Prize in economics for their work on auction theory and the improvement of auction formats. Milgrom was Wilson’s graduate student in the 1970s and the two have worked together ever since.
Stanford explained that the research is the foundation of “much of today’s economy, from the way Google sells advertising to the way telecommunications companies acquire radio waves from the government.”
In a statement on the victory, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences wrote: “They have also used their knowledge to design new auction formats for goods and services that are difficult to sell in the traditional way, such as radio frequencies … Their Discoveries have benefited sellers, buyers and taxpayers around the world. “
Milgrom is the third of Wilson’s students to win a Nobel.
