Worthy choice, especially Suedhof. His work is a seminal contribution to our understanding of one of the most basic principles governing information processing in virtually all nervous systems: the chemical transmission of a signal from one neurone to the other.<p>His review "The Synaptic Vesicle Cycle"[1] in Annual Reviews offers a somewhat accessible look at the critical bits.<p>[1] Use scholar.google.com if you want to find "liberated" PDFs.
Note the dates that all of these US scientists started their careers -- all began their first non-training jobs in the mid-to-late 1970s. This batch of winners is amongst the last generation of US scientists to have stable scientific funding.<p>Starting in the early 1980s, the US began to play political games with research budgets, and since then it's been feast or famine. Whole generations of trainees have been doomed to underemployment, faculty positions have disappeared, and a career in academic science has gone from a feasible choice for smart college students, to a long-shot on par with becoming a professional athlete.<p>This batch of winners is a reminder that in a decade or two, we'll be wondering why the US doesn't win Nobel prizes anymore.
The prize for Schekman and Rothman has been a long time coming - well deserved! For anyone unfamiliar, worth reading their groundbreaking Cell papers from the early 1980s.
(or look at any cell biology textbook!)
Leaves a dull taste to hear that a once prestigious prices has lost all of it's meaning. When people like Obama [1] win a Nobel Prize and Putin [1] get's suggested for another.<p>--<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Nobel_Peace_Prize" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Nobel_Peace_Prize</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.550147" rel="nofollow">http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.550147</a>