Ada Yonath
Ada Yonath
Ada E. Yonath 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...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth22 June 1939
CityGeula, Israel
CountryIsrael
I used ribosomes from very, very robust bacteria under very, very active conditions and found a way - I actually took advantage of research done before me at the Weizmann, the same institute I am now - how to preserve their activity and their integrity while they crystallized.
During my time I had some very difficult years, and I had very pronounced competition, all by men.
People always talk about the implication and applications of a process, but for me, the goal is purely about knowledge. Knowledge can become practical today, in 20 years, or in 500 years. Ask Newton. He didn't know there would be space research based on his accident with the apple.
Even if I tried to fill up the stadium in Ramat Gan, I don't think I could.
I was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to a poor family that shared a rented four-room apartment with two additional families and their children.
The ribosome is a machine that gets instructions from the genetic code and operates chemically in order to produce the product.
The Weizmann Institute showed me respect and didn't require many administrative tasks, so I was quite independent. I did what I wanted.
Anyone who sits in our jails who is not just a criminal but what we call a terrorist, with or without blood on his hands - and these definitions are also unclear to me - should not be sitting in our custody.