Ada Yonath: key obituary facts
Is Ada Yonath dead? Yes. Ada Yonath died on August 31, 2026, at age 87.
Cause of death: Ada Yonath's cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.
What was Ada Yonath known for?
She was an Israeli chemist.
More about Ada Yonath
Born: 22 June 1939.
Place of birth: Jerusalem.
Gender: female.
Occupation: molecular biologist, chemist, university teacher, crystallographer, biochemist, scientist, biologist.
Nationality: Israel.
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Weizmann Institute of Science.
Employer: University of Chicago.
Awards: Israel Prize, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Harvey Prize, Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, Wilhelm Exner Medal, Wolf Prize in Chemistry, L'Oréal-UNESCO Award For Women in Science, Albert Einstein World Award of Science.
Known for: Cryo bio-crystallography.
Ada Yonath, the Israeli crystallographer and Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry, died on August 31, 2026, aged 87.
Born in Jerusalem in 1939, she became known for pioneering cryo bio-crystallography and for her research on the structure of ribosomes. Yonath studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science, and later taught and worked at the Weizmann Institute, where she directed the Helen and Milton A.
Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly. In 2009, she shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz for studies of the ribosome’s structure and function. Her honors also included the Israel Prize, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry and the L’Oréal-UNESCO Award For Women in Science.