Another Nobel for an Israeli
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Israel does it again!
Ada E. Yonath shared the 2009 Nobel prize for chemistry with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz and for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. She is the ninth Israeli to win a Nobel, the fourth woman to win the chemistry prize , and the first Israeli female Nobel winner.
Other facts about Yonath, from Reuters:
– She was born in Jerusalem in June 1939 and gained a BA in chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and then an MA in biophysics. She completed her doctoral thesis with distinction at the Weizmann Institute of Science. She later specialized abroad in biological crystallography, and on her return to Israel she founded the first laboratory in this field.
– She has been a professor at the Weizmann Institute since 1988, holding the Kimmel chair. She headed the Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly since 1989. Between 1986 and 2004, alongside her work at the Institute, she served as head of the research unit of the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg.
– She has studied the processes related to the translation of the genetic code into proteins and her unique studies made it possible to determine the detailed three-dimensional structure of the ribosome.
– She has focused on finding ways to improve antibiotics that paralyze the ribosome. The results of the research done in this field have won her a reputation among international pharmaceutical companies.
– She was a co-recipient (with George Feher) of the 2006 Wolf Prize in Chemistry “for ingenious structural discoveries of the ribosomal machinery of peptide-bond formation and the light-driven primary processes in photosynthesis.
– She has received many prizes for her work, including the Israel Prize for chemistry (2002) and the Wolf Foundation Prize
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