James E Rothman is the Sterling Professor and Chair of the Department of Cell Biology at Yale University. His research has elucidated the molecular mechanisms and machinery governing vesicle traffic in the cell, explaining such diverse processes as the secretion of hormones like insulin, the action-potential controlled release of neurotransmitters in synaptic transmission, and the propagation of membrane compartments of the cytoplasm during cell growth and division.

Rothman is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1993) and a recipient of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Biomedical Research (2002), the Kavli Prize for Neuroscience (2010), and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2013). Rothman graduated from Yale College (1971) with a BA in Physics, received his PhD (Biological Chemistry) from Harvard (1976), and did postdoctoral research at MIT.

Before returning to Yale in 2008 he was a professor at Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia Universities, and was Vice-Chairman of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. He is currently a Research Professor at UCL.