Ada Yonath
Scientists

Ada Yonath Net Worth

Ada Yonath is a renowned scientist who was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1939. Despite coming from an impoverished family, she was determined to pursue her education and went on to earn a PhD in Chemistry. She then dedicated her life to studying the structure and function of the ribosome, introducing innovative techniques in cryo bio-crystallography to enable ribosomal crystallography. For her groundbreaking work, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, becoming the first Israeli woman, first woman from the Middle East, and first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Ada Yonath is a member of Scientists

Age, Biography and Wiki

Who is it? Scientist
Birth Day June 22, 1939
Birth Place Jerusalem, Isreal, Israeli
Age 84 YEARS OLD
Birth Sign Cancer
Residence Israel
Alma mater Hebrew University of Jerusalem Weizmann Institute of Science
Known for Cryo bio-crystallography
Awards Harvey Prize (2002) Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2006) L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science (2008) Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2008) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009)
Fields Crystallography
Institutions Weizmann Institute of Science
Doctoral advisor Wolfie Traub

💰 Net worth: $1.1 Million (2024)

Ada Yonath, a renowned scientist from Israel, has garnered an impressive net worth estimated at $1.1 million as projected for the year 2024. Widely celebrated for her groundbreaking work in the field of structural biology, Yonath has made significant contributions to our understanding of the ribosome's structure and function. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 for her pioneering research. Yonath's remarkable achievements and dedication to scientific exploration have not only propelled her career but have also earned her global recognition as a remarkable scientist.

Biography/Timeline

1933

Yonath (née Lifshitz) was born in the Geula quarter of Jerusalem. Her parents, Hillel and Esther Lifshitz, were Zionist Jews who immigrated to Palestine from Zduńska Wola, Poland in 1933 before the establishment of Israel. Her Father was a rabbi and came from a rabbinical family. They settled in Jerusalem and ran a grocery, but found it difficult to make ends meet. They lived in cramped quarters with several other families, and Yonath remembers "books" being the only thing she had to keep her occupied. Despite their poverty, her parents sent her to school in the upscale Beit HaKerem neighborhood to assure her a good education. When her Father died at the age of 42, the family moved to Tel Aviv. Yonath was accepted to Tichon Hadash high school although her mother could not pay the tuition. She gave math lessons to students in return. As a youngster, she says she was inspired by the Polish and naturalized-French scientist Marie Curie. However, she stresses that Curie, whom she as a child was fascinated by after reading a well-written biography, was not her "role model". She returned to Jerusalem for college, graduating from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1962, and a master's degree in biochemistry in 1964. In 1968, she obtained her Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science for X-ray crystallographic studies on the structure of collagen, with Wolfie Traub as her Ph.D. advisor.

1969

Yonath accepted postdoctoral positions at Carnegie Mellon University (1969) and MIT (1970). While a postdoc at MIT she spent some time in the lab of subsequent 1976 chemistry Nobel Prize winner william N. Lipscomb, Jr. of Harvard University where she was inspired to pursue very large structures.

1970

In 1970, she established what was for nearly a decade the only protein crystallography laboratory in Israel. Then, from 1979 to 1984 she was a group leader with Heinz-Günter Wittmann at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. She was visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1977-78. She headed a Max-Planck Institute Research Unit at DESY in Hamburg, Germany (1986–2004) in parallel to her research activities at the Weizmann Institute.

2000

Yonath focuses on the mechanisms underlying protein biosynthesis, by ribosomal crystallography, a research line she pioneered over twenty years ago despite considerable skepticism of the international scientific community. Ribosomes translate RNA into protein and because they have slightly different structures in microbes, when compared to eukaryotes, such as human cells, they are often a target for antibiotics. In 2000 and 2001, she determined the complete high-resolution structures of both ribosomal subunits and discovered within the otherwise asymmetric ribosome, the universal symmetrical region that provides the framework and navigates the process of polypeptide polymerization. Consequently, she showed that the ribosome is a ribozyme that places its substrates in stereochemistry suitable for peptide bond formation and for substrate-mediated catalysis. In 1993 she visualized the path taken by the nascent proteins, namely the ribosomal tunnel, and recently revealed the dynamics elements enabling its involvement in elongation arrest, gating, intra-cellular regulation and nascent chain trafficking into their folding space.

2009

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 Prize out of ten Israeli Nobel laureates, 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.

2014

Yonath is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities; the European Academy of Sciences and Art and the European Molecular Biology Organization. On Saturday, 18 October 2014, Professor Yonath was named an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Francis.

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About the author

Lisa Scholfield

As a Senior Writer at Famous Net Worth, I spearhead an exceptional team dedicated to uncovering and sharing the stories of pioneering individuals. My passion for unearthing untold narratives drives me to delve deep into the essence of each subject, bringing forth a unique blend of factual accuracy and narrative allure. In orchestrating the editorial workflow, I am deeply involved in every step—from initial research to the final touches of publishing, ensuring each biography not only informs but also engages and inspires our readership.