Yonath Ada

Ada YONATH, Israeli biochemist, the founder of cryo bio-crystallography, professor, director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science, member of the American Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Science.

Ada Yonath is known for her prominent research work in the field of crystallography and for her pioneer discoveries in ribosomes structure.

In 1962 Yonath graduated fr om the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a bachelor"s degree in chemistry, and a master"s degree in biochemistry in 1964. In 1968, she passed her Ph.D. defense in X-Ray crystallography at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Since 1969 Yonath worked on postdoctoral positions at the Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1970 she organized the firs laboratory of crystallography in Israel. Dr. Yonath headed a research unit at the Max Planck Institute in Germany for 18 years simultaneously to her research activities at the Weizmann Institute.

In 2002 Yonath was awaded the Israel State Prize.

In 2006/07 Ada Yonath, co-recipient with her US colleague George Feher, was awarded the Wolf Prize for “discoveries of the ribosomal structure and machinery”.

In 2008 she was the first Israeli woman to win the L"Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science for her work describing the process wh erein the bacteria acquired resistance to antibiotics.

In 2009 Yonath, co-recipient with Thomas Steitz (USA) and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (UK), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “research of the ribosomal structure and functions”.

Ada Yonath was the first woman in the history of the Israeli sience to be awarded a Nobel Prize.