This has been an exciting year in thyroid research. In this article, we summarize the new developments in selected areas of thyroid research by reporting on key papers published during the period June 2009 to June 2010. We selected those papers that, in our opinion, have significant clinical or translational impact. Selection criteria were applied for inclusion of papers for the Year in Thyroid lecture at the 92nd Annual Meeting of The Endocrine Society in San Diego, June, 2010. Papers relating to translational and clinical discovery in thyroidology were reviewed. Papers were chosen if they provided new insight into the understanding of thyroid disease and advanced clinical science, or advanced the diagnosis of disease, or proposed new therapy, or provided new data on important clinical questions in thyroidology. Here we review and discuss these papers and show how they provide new insights into clinical thyroidology.