Overview
- The Weizmann Institute confirmed the death of Ada Yonath, the Israeli structural biologist and 2009 Nobel Prize co-recipient, and national leaders and institutions issued tributes to her scientific leadership.
- Yonath overcame long-standing skepticism to produce the first ribosome crystals after roughly 25,000 experiments and to develop cryo-bio-crystallography that preserved fragile crystals for high-resolution study.
- Her teams produced the first complete three-dimensional structures of bacterial ribosomal subunits around 2000 and then identified where antibiotics bind, which clarified drug action and mechanisms of resistance.
- Yonath received the Nobel Prize and many other major honors, helped build Israel’s protein crystallography capacity, and was known for mentoring generations of scientists while maintaining an active lab late in life.
- Her work changed how researchers design antibiotics by giving atomic-level targets on bacterial ribosomes, a practical tool that matters as scientists confront rising antibiotic resistance.