Ada Yonath: Israel’s First Female Nobelist

Learn how Israeli Nobelist Ada Yonath went from a childhood of intense poverty to an adulthood of innovation and international acclaim in this clip (5:52) from the home of her research, the Weizmann Institute of Science. Recognized as a scientific leader for her ground-breaking developments in ribosome crystallography, Yonath’s work is far from theoretical. Her methods have been adopted in labs all over the world and her discoveries have major implications for the field of medicine, particularly for understanding of antibiotic resistance. In 2009, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry—along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz—making her the only female Israeli Nobel prize winner to date.