The physics Nobel almost always is well deserved. The importance of neutrino physics cannot be overstated - everything depends on these ghosts that can pass through light years of lead without a scattering event. The Kamiokande experiment is the most important one in the world until the antimatter gravity experiment is operational.

In spite of the hype about string theory, almost nothing fundamentally interesting has happened in physics in the last 30 years. The work on neutrinos is an exception.