Honorary Academician
Experimental Sciences: Doctor in Chemistry
Date of admission: June 10, 2017
Reply speech: Hon. Dr. José Luis Salido Banús, Doctor of Law
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009: Awarded the Prize for her contributions to the structure and function of ribosomes and for elucidating the mechanism of protein biosynthesis.
DR. ADA YONATH
- Born in Jerusalem, 1939.
UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
- BSc in Chemistry (1962), MSc in Biochemistry (1964) and PhD (1968) from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she completed her doctoral thesis on X-ray crystallography applied to collagen.
- Postdoctoral studies at the Mellon Institute, Pittsburgh.
- Research stay at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), focused on globular proteins.
- Returned to the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she established Israel’s first protein crystallography laboratory.
TEACHING AND PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY
- Pioneer in deciphering the three-dimensional structure of the ribosome and understanding the mechanism of protein biosynthesis.
- Collaborated with H. G. Wittmann of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin.
- Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago (1977–1978).
- Director of a research unit at DESY, Hamburg, under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute (1986–2004).
- Developed the technique of cryobiocrystallography, now essential in structural biology.
- Her discoveries on the ribosome enabled major advances in designing more effective antibiotics against resistant bacteria.
AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
- Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
- Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2006), together with George Feher.
- L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award (2008).
- Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2008).
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009), shared with Thomas Steitz and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan.
