James Rothman, Randy Schekman, Thomas Südhof (left to right) NOBELPRIZE.ORG, H GOREN © HHMI, FISCH Randy Schekman returned from Germany last night only to be woken up after a few hours of sleep by his wife yelling, “This is it!” after she heard the phone ring. “I snapped to attention,” Schekman told The Scientist. “My heart started to race.” The voice on the other end told him he had won the Nobel Prize. Schekman, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and two others—James Rothman of Yale University and Thomas Südhof of Stanford University—share the Nobel in Physiology or Medicine this year for their discoveries in the fundamental mechanisms of trafficking cellular cargo.
Each has made major contributions to understanding the organization of how vesicle contents are discharged at the cell membrane. And each came to similar answers from different angles. Schekman focused on yeast genetics, while Rothman used biochemical methods in mammalian cells, and Südhof worked on synaptic vesicles in nerve terminals.
At 4:00 AM, EDT, this morning, Schekman called his best friend, Bill Wickner at Dartmouth College, to tell him the good news. Wickner told The Scientist he was not surprised to hear that Schekman and the others had won. “It's been clear” they would, said Wickner, who has had decades-long relationships with each of the winners. He even introduced Schekman to his wife.
“They're three very different people. Each is very intelligent, very purposeful and ...
