Ada Yonath, an Israeli crystallographer and biochemist, passed away at age 87. She became only the fourth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which she was awarded in 2009 for her groundbreaking work on the molecular structure of ribosomes, sharing the honor with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz.
For much of her career, Yonath faced significant skepticism from the scientific community regarding her ambitious goal to map the ribosome’s structure. Ribosomes are microscopic cellular structures, often measuring only 20 nanometres in diameter, with irregular shapes and no internal symmetry, making them extremely difficult to study. Prominent scientists, including DNA pioneer James Watson, had attempted the task without success. Yonath persisted despite being called a dreamer and other dismissive characterizations.
Her key insight came in the late 1970s while recovering from a bicycle accident. Reading about polar bear biology, she learned that bears naturally compact their ribosomes in an orderly fashion during hibernation. This observation led her to hypothesize that ribosomes could be crystallized for study using X-ray and electron microscopy techniques. She focused on thermophile bacteria found in extreme environments, reasoning that organisms from harsh conditions would have more robust ribosomes capable of surviving the crystallization process. After more than 25,000 attempts, she succeeded in the mid-1980s and pioneered cryo bio-crystallography techniques. Her team completed the three-dimensional mapping of a bacterial ribosome in 2001 and 2002.
Yonath’s work had profound practical implications for medicine. The structural knowledge enabled scientists to understand how more than 20 antibiotics function by binding to specific ribosomal sites, allowing for more targeted drug development. Her research advanced understanding of how bacterial resistance to antibiotics might be overcome, work the Nobel Committee specifically recognized in its citation.
Born in Jerusalem to Polish-immigrant parents, Yonath earned degrees from Hebrew University and completed her PhD at the Weizmann Institute, where she spent the majority of her career. Beyond her scientific achievements, she was known for political outspokenness, recently criticizing Israeli judicial reforms. She was survived by a daughter and granddaughter.
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