The Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim an der Ruhr is a large building complex on the edge of a residential area.

Inside the high-rise laboratory you can see people in white coats with protective goggles working through glass walls.

Benjamin List, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry and Director of the Institute, is on the 9th floor.

We know each other from Frankfurt and we talk to each other.

List wears a dark suit with sneakers and apologizes that there is no milk with his coffee.

Anke Schipp

Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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On October 6th you were sitting with your wife in a café in Amsterdam.

What was going on in your head when your cell phone rang with a Swedish number around 11 a.m.?

I knew, of course, that the Nobel Prize would be awarded that day.

You just know that when you play in a certain league.

In 2009 there was a rumor on a scientific website that I would get it.

But then I didn't expect it any more than I did this year, otherwise I wouldn't have gone to a concert in Amsterdam with my wife.

If anything, I would have thought I'd get it when I was 70 or 80.

But not at 53.

Exactly.

Nevertheless, when it vibrated in my pocket at 11 o'clock, I already had in mind what day it was.

On the cell phone I saw a very long number and the word "Sweden" at the bottom.

To my wife I said: "Sweden is calling." And she said more jokingly: "That is

the

call."

And what did "Sweden" say then?

“Hello, this is Göran Hansson from the Nobel Committee, I have good news for you.” I knew his voice from the press conferences on the Internet and said: “It doesn't exist!” And he replied: “You don't know yet , what it's about. ”Then he officially announced that I would receive the Nobel Prize.

And a lot of people talked to me afterwards, including the organic chemist from the Commission.

And I was asked if I would accept the award.

Sartre once rejected him for political reasons.

Hansson later said that no one has ever been as happy as you.

That may be, but I was just so excited when I stood in front of the café.

And I still had to convey to my wife through the window that this is

the

call

now

.

How did you do that?

I indicated that I would faint.

Then you had three quarters of an hour to process the shock before the news went out into the world.

Normally it would have been like that.

We then ordered something even though I couldn't eat anything.

Fifteen minutes later, Hansson called again and asked me for the cell phone number of fellow award winner David MacMillan, whom he had not reached.

I gave it to him and texted David: “Dave, wake up!” When he called me back and I told him that he was about to get a call from Stockholm, he just replied: “Sorry, Ben, but that's a

prank

.

I also have crazy students who joke about me all the time. ”He assumed we were being fooled.

But were you sure?

I recognized Hansson's voice.

I thought, if it's a joke it's a pretty good one, then they must have been working with voice imitators.

But David just didn't want to believe it and texted me that he was sorry for me, that his students were bad guys and he would bet $ 1000 that the call wasn't real.

A short time later, when Hansson had finally reached him, he wrote: "Ok, no more sleep tonight!"

Getting the Nobel Prize is like living 100 years old.

Everyone asks: How do you do it?

How did it start with you