Israeli scientist honored by UNESCO

From the Jerusalem Post

Prof. Ada Yonath, a world-class molecular biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, has been chosen to receive the $100,000 L’Oreal and UNESCO “For Women in Science” Life’s Work Prize – one of only five awarded each year to outstanding female scientists on each continent.Yonath is the first Israeli to receive the prestigious prize after being nominated by the Education Ministry’s UNESCO committee, which is the government’s advisory body on UNESCO activities in Israel. As the recipient of the prize, Yonath is recognized as this year’s leading woman scientist in Europe.

This is a description of her accomplishments

Yonath, who was born in Jerusalem in 1939, is a crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of ribosomes. She received her PhD at the Rehovot institute and accepted postdoctoral positions at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University. In 1970 she established what was for nearly a decade the only protein crystallography laboratory in Israel. Her research focuses on the mechanisms underlying protein biosynthesis by ribosomal crystallography, a research line she pioneered more than two decades ago despite much skepticism within the international scientific community.Yonath elucidated the modes of action of over 20 different antibiotics targeting the ribosome, explained the mechanism of drug resistance and the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity and showed how it plays a key role in clinical usefulness and therapeutic effectiveness, thus paving the way for structure-based drug design.

And if you’re interested her faculty page at Weizmann is here.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.