Today, Medical Faculty of Lund University was honoured with a visit from Ada Yonath, an Israeli crystallographer and director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 2009, she received the Nobel Price in Chemistry for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome, becoming the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize, the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
She gave a lecture 'Life: Expectancy and Origin' of her path to start studying ribosomes after noticing that life expectancy of human kind wasn't growing as fast as it could have, her discoveries in mechanism underlying protein biosynthesis, by ribosomal crystallography, continuing to elucidating the modes of action of over 20 different antibiotics targeting the ribosome and illuminating process of drug resistance and synergism. In terms of medical science due to her research, she has been able to decipher the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity and show how it plays a key role in clinical usefulness and therapeutic effectiveness, thus paying the way for structure-based drug design.
Besides being a pioneer in science, she is an excellent lecturer being able to visualize and explain crystallography in simple terms, and according to her own words; a grandmother who has time for her family and not only for work ending the lecture to the words of thanks to family and supporters. May her have many health years to come as Rita Levi-Montalcini.
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