Roderick MacKinnon has been widely tipped to win a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on the structure and function of ion channels — and this year he shares the Chemistry prize with Peter Agre, the discoverer of aquaporins. Unusually, the work for which MacKinnon is honoured was published just five years ago, in 1998.

As the New Scientist (8 October) explains: “MacKinnon's breakthrough in laying bare the structure of an ion channel for the first time was achieved by turning to a much simpler example of an ion channel than his competitors.” The principles that were revealed by the structure of a bacterial potassium channel could be applied to the more complex channels found in neurons. The Nobel Academy statement said, “Thanks to this contribution we can now 'see' ions flowing through channels that can be opened and closed by different cellular signals.”

On the day the prize was announced, MacKinnon was lauded by his colleagues. Talking to the Baltimore Sun (9 October), Christopher Miller, MacKinnon's former mentor, described him as “an offscale brilliant scientist” who has “completely changed the field.” MacKinnon himself reportedly had trouble accepting the fact that he had won. He described to a press conference how he had been called at his holiday home in Cape Cod with the news. He then searched the internet but, finding no stories to confirm the news, had to wait for another call from Rockefeller. But, he said, “I wanted confirmation from Sweden. I realized after this morning that no one could reach me... I'd better buy a cell phone.” (Reuters, 8 October.)