Stephen Hell co-winner of this year’s Nobel Chemistry Prize, was quietly checking a scientific paper when the phone rang Wednesday with what he thought initially was a prank call. ‘It was a total surprise, I couldn’t believe it. The first moment I thought it was perhaps a hoax,’ he told the Nobel Foundation. ‘But I remembered the voice of (Nobel Committee member) Professor Normark and then I realised there were also other people around... and so it’s serious.’