For Prof. Andrew Fire and Prof. Roger Kornberg, the 2006 Nobel Prize laureates in Medicine and Chemistry respectively, last week’s early morning phone calls first seemed like an annoying misdial.

Kornberg had just arrived home from Israel last Wednesday when the phone rang at 2:30 a.m. Jolted awake from what were his first few moments of sleep in 48 hours, Kornberg was stunned to hear that he’d won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to DNA transcription.

“I didn’t have any first thoughts,” he said in an interview with The Daily. “I was initially bewildered.”

Little did he know, that would be end of his sleep for the night. Within 15 minutes of the official announcement, the press corps was clogging his phone line.

Two days earlier, Fire had received a similar call. “I thought it was a mistake,” he said. “I was not sure I was awake.”

Fire, whose interest in science began in middle school baking soda and vinegar experiments, soon realized the call was real. His work with a method called “gene silencing” had earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

A week after the surprise, both professors say they hope to continue with their lives and work as usual.

“I plan to do the same work as we were doing before, which I greatly enjoy,” Kornberg said. “I want to press on. I am certainly not done.”

Fire and Kornberg both plan to stay grounded to their research and families, but it may not be so easy with the heightened recognition that follows Nobel laureates.

“It seems the best time to get the Nobel Prize is when you’re about to retire,” said Physics Prof. Douglas Osheroff, who won the award for physics in 1996.

Osheroff said it can be hard to find the balance between research, teaching and lecture invitations from presidents, kings and institutions around the world. While he said it is always a great experience to travel to exotic places and reach out to young scientists, Osheroff had one piece of advice to pass on to Stanford’s two new winners:

“You have to learn to say ‘no’ at times,” he said.

For Fire, a modest and soft-spoken Sunnyvale native, the week has been a wild ride, but he said he is ready to take up the extra responsibility.

“It’s nice that Nobel Prize winners have the chance to promote the science that’s being done in the community and bring it to the attention of the public and Congress,” he said. “People listen to you. I think of it as not exactly a burden, but a challenge.”

The two professors say the road to the Nobel is found in vital intellectual curiosity, hard work and a bit of luck.

“Do whatever you do just as well as you possibly can,” Kornberg said. “After that, some people get lucky.”

Fire emphasized that significant contributions to science were made by the collaboration of many minds.

“Listen to your colleagues, listen to your students and other people around you who have ideas and questions,” he said. “Science is a mix of craft and questions. The craft comes from years of experience, but the questions don’t.”

So what more can you do when you’ve already won the most coveted prize in science? The questions haven’t stopped for Fire.

“On Friday, Sept. 30, I had a list of things I wanted to do,” Fire said. “They’re still on the agenda. It would be nice to translate some of the discoveries to treatments that would help people. One of the things I love about the Stanford Medical School is the close connection here between clinical work and research science.”

Kornberg, too, said he would stay devoted to his research.

“It is certainly my hope nothing will be very different,” he said. “I currently have wonderful circumstances with my family and my research. I want to avoid the disruption of my work as much as possible.”

And of the $1.4 million prize money?

“Well, as I always point out, half of it goes to the government,” Kornberg said. “The rest will go to my children’s education and, if there’s any left over, maybe we’ll replace our 20-year-old Jalopy.”