Ada Yonath

Ada E. Yonath (born 1939) (Hebrew: עדה יונת‎, pronounced [ˈada joˈnat]) is an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of the ribosome. She is the current director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 2009, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz for her studies on t... more

Ada E. Yonath (born 1939) (Hebrew: עדה יונת‎, pronounced [ˈada joˈnat]) is an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of the ribosome. She is the current director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 2009, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome, becoming the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize out of nine Israeli Nobel laureates, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Yonath was born on June 22, 1939 in the Geula quarter of Jerusalem. Her parents were Zionist Jews who immigrated to Palestine before the establishment of Israel and her father was a rabbi. They settled in Jerusalem and ran a grocery store, but found it difficult to make ends meet. They lived in cramped quarters with several other families,... less