Ada Yonath, Nobel-winning crystallographer who solved ribosome structure, dies at 87
Israeli structural biologist Ada Yonath, a 2009 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, has passed away at age 87 after pioneering the crystallization of the ribosome.
Ada Yonath, an Israeli structural biologist who died at 87, was celebrated for overcoming the daunting task of crystallizing the ribosome, the cellular machine that synthesizes proteins. Her breakthrough enabled the first X-ray analysis of this enormous complex, revealing how antibiotics interact with bacterial ribosomes and shedding light on resistance pathways, which has informed the development of new antimicrobial agents.
Born Ada Lifshitz in Jerusalem to a modest Orthodox Jewish family, she pursued higher education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a doctorate in structural biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. After postdoctoral stints at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh and MIT, she returned to the Weizmann Institute in 1970 to launch Israel’s inaugural biological crystallography laboratory. Collaborating with Heinz-Günther Wittmann at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in West Berlin, she succeeded where many had doubted the feasibility of ribosome crystallization.
Her contributions were recognized with a share of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, making her the fourth woman ever to receive the chemistry Nobel. Yonath’s legacy endures in the fields of structural biology and antibiotic research.
Why it matters
Her ribosome breakthrough transformed understanding of protein synthesis and guided the design of new antibiotics.
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