by Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede

Ada Yonath is an exceptional biophysicist working as the director of Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Her research career has not been easy, but despite a lot of skepti­cism on the way, she won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her groundbreaking work on ribosomes. She is the first ever Israeli women to receive a Nobel Prize, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Chemistry prize. According to Yonath, her success has been grounded in curiosity, dedication, and passion.

Yonath was born in 1939 in Jerusalem into an impoverished family. Her father was a rabbi who ran a grocery store and her mother worked in the home. They shared a four-room apartment with two other families. The harsh conditions did not dampen Yonath’s enormous curiosity about the world, and early on she began designing her own little experiments. The neighborhood schools were focused on teaching religion—for the boys—and household skills—for the girls—but Yonath’s kindergarten teacher realized Yonath had great potential in other subjects. As it was not safe to take a bus to another area to reach a better school, the teacher gave extra lessons after school and eventually did help Yonath get into a better school. Yonath also was inspired by Marie Curie during her younger years.

Yonath’s father was ill for a long time before dying when Ada was only 11. His death sent the family into economic crisis and Yonath helped bring in money by taking a number of different jobs, but it was not enough. Soon, she and her mother moved to Tel Aviv to be close to her mother’s sisters. Although Yonath’s parents did not have any formal education, and their life was difficult, they always supported her desire to keep learning. She completed high school in Tel Aviv at Tichon Hadash, paying the fees with money she earned teaching math to younger stu­dents—and some her own age.

After her compulsory army service in the Medical Forces, Yonath enrolled in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to study chemistry, biochemistry, and biophysics. During her PhD years (1964-1968) at the Weizmann Institute of Science, she focused on a fibrous protein (collagen) and was not trained in high res­olution structural methods. She continued with fibrous protein structures (muscle) during her postdoctoral period at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1969 and then, during her second postdoc at MIT in 1970, she had the opportunity to learn high resolution structural methods for protein 3-dimen­sional analysis. In late 1970, she returned to the Weizmann Institute and established the first biological crystallography lab­oratory in Israel. Yonath’s ambitious plan was to solve a major outstanding question concerning living cells – the process of protein biosynthesis. For this, a high resolution structure of the ribosome was needed and she spent over 20 years trying to solve this issue. It was a tough road. The international scientific community was skeptical and thought it was a ridiculous and impossible quest by a young researcher. She was called “the world’s dreamer” and “the village fool” among other insults.

Thanks to collaboration with Heinz-Günter Wittmann, first at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and later head of a research unit at the DESY synchrotron in Hamburg, Yonath got support to proceed with her studies. While recovering from a severe concussion after a bicycle acci­dent in Berlin, Yonath read about polar bears (in one of the few English-language magazines around) and had a crucial idea. She learned that during hibernation, the ribosomes of the bears are packed orderly on the inner side of their cell membranes. This guided her to find more stable but still active forms of ribo­somes amenable to crystallization.

 During the years to come, Yonath worked tirelessly towards her goal of understanding the function of the ribosome through determining its high resolution structure. She remembers the day in the mid-1980s when she finally had a ribosome crystal. She says, “It was a true Eureka moment.” Eureka moments were not something frequent in her career; instead progress was often built from small incremental successes. Once the structure of the ribosome was determined, it also provided a detailed understanding of how many common antibiotics that target ribosomes work, which is a topic she has followed up on. On the way to the ribosome structure, Yonath developed several innovative technical methods such as cryo-bio-crys­tallography. She also sent ribosomes into space on twelve NASA missions to assess crystallization in zero-gravity. Her discoveries have paved the way for many other studies in structural biology and for the development of new antibiotics.

Yonath first thought it was a prank when Stockholm called in October of 2009. She believes the Nobel Prize brought aware­ness of these elaborate machines to the public. Because she has curly hair, there is a new saying in Israel that “curly hair means head full of ribosomes.” She continues to work at the Weizmann Institute and has her mind set on many new ques­tions regarding ribosomes, such as the structure of the most ancient RNA apparatus that produced peptide bonds and thus, in essence, gave rise to life on earth.

Yonath has a daughter, Hagith, who was born in the middle of her PhD period. She worked night shifts in the lab when Hagith was little, and later, during her postdoctoral years, Hagith went to kindergarten. Having children, according to Yonath, is a blessing that is only given to women. You must love having a family and see it as a privilege, which Yonath does. She now has a granddaughter, Noa, in her family as well.

The best advice Yonath has for young scientists aspiring to do academic research careers is to be curious, more curious and have a true passion for what you do. She says, “Science is demanding and there are many dark periods.” She has survived many such periods - her story demonstrates that persistence through those times will ultimately lead to success.