The Science Museum of the University of Navarra highlights the scientific career of Ada Yonath, in a new video of the series "Women in Science".
Ada Yonath received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 for her research on the structure and function of ribosomes.
11 | 06 | 2021
The Science Museum University of Navarra has produced a new video of the series "Women in Science", an initiative of this institution to highlight the role of some women scientists of reference unknown to the general public.
This time the protagonist is Ada Yonath, the fourth woman in history to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009) for the study of the function and structure of ribosomes.
Ada Yonath was born into a Jewish family in 1939, and despite her family's limited financial resources, her parents were committed to a quality education. Although her parents made a great effort to send her to a good school, Ada had to teach mathematics in order to finance her studies.
Despite her interest in the humanities, Ada soon discovered her passion for science. She studied chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received her PhD from the Weizman Institute, where she specialized in crystallography. Yonath completed two postdoctoral stays in the United States and, at the end of 1970, she returned to Israel and founded the first biological crystallography laboratory in the country.
Ada has devoted himself to the study of ribosome structure and developed a new technique known as "cryo-bio-crystallography". Her research has been the basis for identifying the mechanism of action of many antibiotics that kill bacteria by attacking their ribosomes. These findings have contributed to the design of new generations of antibiotics.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009
Ada Yonath is the fourth woman in history to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She was awarded this recognition in 2009 -together with scientists Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz- for the study of the structure and function of ribosomes -cellular factories where proteins are produced, in a process known as translation-.
Currently, Dr. Yonath combines research with teaching at various universities around the world. She is Director of the Kimmelman Center and Professor in the Department of Structural Biology. Her research group continues to study how antibiotics act and the role of ribosomes in the origin of life.
"Women in Science" is an initiative of the Science Museum -funded by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) / Ministry of Science and Innovation-with the collaboration of the Women for Science and Technology group of the University of Navarra. This informative project is part of the Science Museum's STEM strategy to make the teaching of subjects related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics more attractive, especially among girls and young women.