Agency reports indicate that Israel is mourning the passing of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ada Yonath, whose research helped shape the fight against antibiotic resistance.
Professor Ada Yonath, laureate of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Israel Prize, passed away on August 31, 2026. She was 87, the Weizmann Institute of Science announced. cf6f
Yonath, of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Chemical and Structural Biology Department, “pioneered the study of ribosome structure using crystallography and was awarded the Nobel Prize for her research in this field”. cf6f
The Institute said her work “helped pave the way for the development of more advanced antibiotics and the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria – one of the most pressing medical challenges of the 21st century”. d321
Born Ada Lifshitz in Jerusalem in 1939, she lost her father at age 11 and grew up in poverty. She “began working before age 12” but went on to earn her PhD in X-ray crystallography at Weizmann in 1968. In 1970, she “established Israel’s first laboratory for protein crystallography at the Weizmann Institute”. d321241f
She won numerous prizes and “was the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize, winning the 2009 award in chemistry for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome. She was also the first woman in 45 years to win the prize for chemistry”. 9966
Mourning her death, President Isaac Herzog said she “was among the leading researchers in Israeli scientific history”. He hailed her as a “globally pathbreaking woman, a pioneer who proved that curiosity, devotion to a goal and uncompromising determination can break the bounds of human knowledge”. 9966
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said she “was one of those people who proved to the world that Israeli science can go the farthest, and proved to the scientific world that women can break through any glass ceiling”. 9966
Weizmann Institute President Prof. Alon Chen said: “Ada was an exceptional scientist who never hesitated to choose a path that others considered impossible and to pursue it for decades with determination, curiosity and courage”. cf6f
As tributes noted, “She spent a lifetime studying how life works at its smallest level so that more people could live. May her memory be a blessing.”