Ada E. Yonath

The crystallographer who turned the impossible into inevitable

Most people assume Nobel laureates always believed in their groundbreaking ideas, but Ada Yonath spent decades being told her life's work was fundamentally impossible. For over twenty years, fellow scientists dismissed her attempts to crystallize ribosomes—the cellular machines that make proteins—as a fool's errand. The structures were too large, too fragile, too complex. Yonath kept working anyway, driven by a childhood curiosity that began with dismantling alarm clocks and a stubborn refusal to accept that something in nature couldn't be understood.

Timeline of Key Moments

• 1939 - Born in Jerusalem during British Mandate Palestine to a poor family
• 1962 - Graduates with chemistry degree from Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• 1964 - Completes master's degree, begins doctoral studies in X-ray crystallography
• 1970 - Earns PhD from Weizmann Institute, starts postdoctoral work at Carnegie Mellon and MIT
• 1979 - Begins ribosome crystallization project at Weizmann Institute, facing widespread skepticism
• 1980 - Produces first ribosome crystals, though not suitable for structure determination
• 1998 - Achieves breakthrough with high-resolution ribosome crystal structures
• 2000 - Publishes landmark papers revealing atomic structure of ribosome subunits
• 2005 - Receives first major international recognition with Wolf Prize in Chemistry
• 2009 - Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz
• 2010-present - Continues research on antibiotic resistance and ribosome function

The Human Story

Ada Yonath's journey to the Nobel Prize began in a cramped Jerusalem apartment where curiosity was the only luxury her family could afford. Her father died when she was eleven, leaving her mother to raise three children while working multiple jobs. Young Ada dismantled alarm clocks and built makeshift laboratories in their tiny home, driven by an insatiable need to understand how things worked. When neighbors complained about her "experiments," her mother defended her daughter's right to explore, even when it meant reassembling furniture that Ada had taken apart to study its construction.

This early pattern of taking apart complex systems to understand their inner workings would define Yonath's entire career. But first, she had to overcome the assumption that a girl from a poor family had no business in science. At Hebrew University, professors initially discouraged her from pursuing chemistry, suggesting she'd be better suited for teaching. Yonath ignored them, excelling in her studies while working nights to support herself and her family.

The moment that changed everything came during her postdoctoral work in the 1970s when she encountered ribosomes—the ancient, essential machines present in every living cell that translate genetic information into proteins. Most scientists studied these structures using indirect methods, but Yonath became obsessed with seeing them directly through X-ray crystallography. The problem was that ribosomes were considered impossible to crystallize. They were enormous by molecular standards, fragile, and constantly changing shape.

The Nobel moment itself arrived on October 7, 2009, when Yonath was attending a conference in Berlin. She received the call at 5:30 AM local time and initially thought it was a prank. "I was sure someone was kidding me," she later recalled. Her first reaction wasn't joy but disbelief, followed by the practical concern of how to get back to Israel for the media attention while finishing her conference obligations. She called her daughter first, then her research team, emphasizing that the prize belonged to all of them.

The politics and controversy surrounding her Nobel Prize were relatively minimal compared to other scientific awards, though some questioned why the committee chose to honor ribosome structure when the functional studies might have been equally deserving. More significantly, dozens of researchers had contributed to ribosome crystallography over the decades, and the three-person limit for Nobel Prizes meant many collaborators went unrecognized. Yonath was acutely aware of this limitation and consistently credited her team and international collaborators in her acceptance speech and subsequent interviews.

The path to that recognition, however, was marked by decades of professional isolation. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Yonath's ribosome crystallization project was considered a scientific dead end. Grant applications were rejected, papers were dismissed by reviewers, and colleagues openly questioned her judgment. "People thought I was crazy," she remembered. "They said ribosomes are too big, too complicated, too flexible to crystallize." The criticism was so persistent that she sometimes wondered if they were right.

The human cost of excellence was substantial. Yonath's obsessive dedication to her research meant working eighteen-hour days for years, often sleeping in her laboratory. Her marriage ended partly due to the demands of her career, and she struggled to balance motherhood with the consuming nature of her research. She missed family gatherings, school events, and social connections that others took for granted. The years of professional rejection also took a psychological toll, creating periods of self-doubt that she had to overcome repeatedly.

What sustained her through these difficult years was an almost childlike fascination with the fundamental questions her work addressed. Ribosomes exist in every living thing, from bacteria to humans, and they've remained essentially unchanged for billions of years. Understanding their structure meant understanding one of life's most basic processes. Yonath often described her work as "eavesdropping on the conversation between DNA and proteins," and this sense of uncovering nature's secrets kept her motivated when external validation was absent.

The breakthrough came gradually, then suddenly. In the late 1990s, advances in synchrotron radiation and computing power finally made high-resolution ribosome crystallography possible. Yonath's decades of methodical work on crystallization techniques suddenly paid off. When she first saw the atomic-level structure of the ribosome on her computer screen, she sat in stunned silence. "It was like seeing the face of God," she later said, though she immediately followed this with characteristic humor: "Well, maybe God's machinery."

The "Nobel effect" transformed Yonath from an obscure crystallographer into a global scientific celebrity, but she handled the transition with remarkable grace. Rather than resting on her achievements, she used her new platform to advocate for women in science and to push for more research on antibiotic resistance. The prize money went toward establishing fellowships for young researchers, particularly women from developing countries. She found that winning the Nobel actually increased her workload rather than allowing her to slow down, as she felt obligated to use her visibility responsibly.

Her perspectives on topics outside her famous work revealed a Renaissance-like curiosity. Yonath was passionate about archaeology, often drawing parallels between uncovering ancient civilizations and revealing molecular structures. She collected art and was particularly drawn to abstract works that reminded her of crystallographic patterns. Her approach to cooking was famously experimental—she treated recipes like scientific protocols that could be modified and improved.

The inspiration for her ribosome work came from an unexpected source: polar bears. During a 1979 visit to a research station, Yonath learned that polar bears' ribosomes remain stable during hibernation while the bears' other cellular processes slow down. This gave her the idea that ribosomes from extremophile bacteria—organisms that live in harsh conditions—might be more stable and easier to crystallize. It was a connection that no one else had made, linking Arctic biology to molecular structure.

Her work influenced fields far beyond structural biology. The detailed understanding of ribosome function that emerged from her crystallographic studies revolutionized antibiotic development, since many antibiotics work by targeting bacterial ribosomes. Pharmaceutical companies could now design drugs with atomic-level precision, leading to more effective treatments with fewer side effects. Her research also contributed to our understanding of evolution, revealing how the ribosome's structure reflects its ancient origins.

The world was very different when Yonath began her ribosome project in 1979. Personal computers were rare, the internet didn't exist, and international scientific collaboration required letters and expensive phone calls. Women in science faced even more barriers than today, and Israeli scientists often struggled for recognition in international circles. Yonath's success helped change perceptions on multiple fronts, proving that groundbreaking science could come from unexpected places and people.

Revealing Quotes

On persistence through doubt: "I was told for 20 years that what I was doing was impossible. But I had a feeling that if nature made ribosomes, we should be able to understand them. Nature doesn't keep secrets just to annoy scientists." (Said during a 2010 interview about her decades of rejected grant applications)

On the moment of discovery: "When I first saw the ribosome structure at atomic resolution, I couldn't speak for ten minutes. My students thought something was wrong with me. But I was seeing the machinery of life itself, the same machinery that exists in every living thing on Earth." (Describing her reaction to the breakthrough crystallographic images in 1998)

On winning the Nobel Prize: "The Nobel Prize doesn't belong to me alone. It belongs to every student who stayed late in the lab, every technician who prepared samples, every colleague who shared an idea. Science is not a solo sport." (From her Nobel acceptance speech in Stockholm)

On being underestimated: "Being told you can't do something is actually quite liberating. It means you don't have to worry about competition—everyone else thinks it's impossible, so you have the field to yourself." (Reflecting on the advantages of working on problems others avoided)

On the purpose of science: "We don't do science to win prizes. We do it because we're curious about how the world works, and because understanding nature helps us help humanity. The ribosome research led to better antibiotics, which saves lives. That's worth more than any medal." (During a 2015 lecture to young scientists)

Yonath's story teaches us that the most important breakthroughs often come from pursuing questions that others consider impossible or impractical. Her journey reveals that scientific progress requires not just intelligence and skill, but also the courage to work in isolation, the persistence to continue despite repeated failures, and the wisdom to recognize that nature's complexity is not a barrier to understanding but an invitation to look deeper. Her Nobel Prize represents not just personal achievement, but proof that curiosity, properly channeled and sustained over decades, can literally reveal the machinery of life itself.