Ada Yonath
Ada Yonath
Ada E. Yonath is an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of the ribosome. She is the current 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 Prize in Chemistry along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome, becoming the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth22 June 1939
CityGeula, Israel
CountryIsrael
I'm always having to get rid of reporters.
I was born in Jerusalem with a religious background and a rabbi as a father... it was rather poor, but what we did have, we did have books.
I was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to a poor family that shared a rented four-room apartment with two additional families and their children.
I don't distinguish between men and women. This is irrelevant to me, and I don't think in these terms.
I am against boycotts in general: boycotts against us as well as anything and everything that can be boycotted.
Even if I tried to fill up the stadium in Ramat Gan, I don't think I could.
People are obsessed with my haircut; everyone wants to do something with my hair before the ceremony. Very senior figures tell me their hairstylist wants to do my hair for free. It's surprising. People from television are interested almost exclusively in aspects of my hair and my hairdresser.
My kindergarten teacher encouraged me to learn, as did my school headmaster, who gave me a grant to study.
It is a great honor for me to be able to express my sincere gratitude to the Nobel Foundation.
People always talk about the implication and applications of a process, but for me, the goal is purely about knowledge. Knowledge can become practical today, in 20 years, or in 500 years. Ask Newton. He didn't know there would be space research based on his accident with the apple.
During my time I had some very difficult years, and I had very pronounced competition, all by men.
Waiting for me in Stockholm will be a personal assistant - Katrina from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs - as well the secretary of the Swedish Academy. They'll help us with our things and take us to our hotel. From the moment I arrive, I'll always be together with the other two laureates.
The world was not supportive. They look at me as a joke for 13 to 14 years until I could prove feasibility; then I had competitors. Those that laughed at me became my competitors.
Once, when I tried to calculate the height of the balcony, I broke my arm. Another time, I wanted to see if water moves faster than kerosene. When my father came out to smoke, a fire broke out.