Fairfield Native Wins Nobel Prize

FAIRFIELD, CT — A Fairfield native has won the Nobel Prize. Dr. William Kaelin Jr., of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, received the prize for advances in physiology or medicine along with Dr. Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins University and Dr. Peter Ratcliffe of the Francis Crick Institute and Oxford University.

Kaelin grew up in Fairfield, where he went to Tomlinson Middle School and graduated from Roger Ludlowe High School in 1975, according to a news release from the town of Fairfield. After attending Duke University, Kaelin trained at Johns Hopkins and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Kaelin, 61, said he was half-asleep when the phone rang Monday morning with the news of his award.

"I don't usually get phone calls at 5:00 in the morning, so, naturally, my heart started racing and I could see the call was from Stockholm," he said. "And so I think at that point I almost had an out-of-body type of experience."

Kaelin, Semenza and Ratcliffe won the award Monday for discovering details of how the body's cells sense and react to low oxygen levels, providing a foothold for developing new treatments for anemia, cancer and other diseases.

The scientists, who worked largely independently, will share the 9 million kronor ($918,000) cash award, said the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

They "revealed the mechanism for one of life's most essential adaptive processes," the Nobel committee said.

Fairfield officials expressed excitement at the news of the award.

"Billy was a wonderful student," Milt Jacoby, who was Kaelin's English teacher at Tomlinson, said in the news release.

Greg Hatzis, the headmaster at Fairfield Ludlowe — formerly Roger Ludlowe — High School, called Kaelin "an inspiration" for students.

"We are extremely proud to know that his time here at Ludlowe may have been the spark to his future accomplishments," Hatzis said in the news release.

Superintendent Mike Cummings and First Selectman Mike Tetreau both praised Kaelin as well.

“On behalf of the entire Fairfield community, I want to congratulate Dr. Kaelin on this monumental achievement," Tetreau said in the news release. "It is so great to know that Fairfield’s Public School System provides the foundation to help students achieve this level of excellence on a global scale. It is also very inspiring to have one of Fairfield’s own help make tremendous strides in promising new strategies to fight diseases like cancer and anemia.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.