Nature Newsmaker of the Year is CERN’s Lyn Evans, the project director for the Large Hadron Collider. His year has seen a remarkable high, the much-heralded start-up of the LHC. And a notable low, when it broke down expensively, following a helium leak. Geoff Brumfiel profiles Evans and looks to the future of the new collider, which is to form the cornerstone of CERN’s particle physics research for the next two decades. (Cover photo: Maximilien Brice/CERN) [News Feature p. 862; Editorial p. 837; www.nature.com/podcast] In Research Highlights [page 840], Nature editors pick some of the outstanding papers of the year that we didn’t publish and in the extended Contents pages we select some of our favourites from Nature. Other year-end content in this double issue includes a selection of the most eye-catching images of the year [2008 Gallery p. 854], and a round-up of some of the medal- and prize-winners of 2008 [page 860]. The year-end content, with much more including videos and podcast highlights, can be found on www.nature.com/news/specials/2008/index.html.