Ada Yonath Quotes

After I spent my compulsory army service in the 'top secret office' of the Medical Forces, where I was fortunate to be exposed to clinical and medical issues, I enrolled to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Anyone who sits in our jails who is not just a criminal but what we call a terrorist, with or without blood on his hands - and these definitions are also unclear to me - should not be sitting in our custody.
At the end of the 1970s, I was a young researcher at the Weizmann Institute with an ambitious plan to shed light on one of the major outstanding questions concerning living cells: the process of protein biosynthesis.
DNA is a code of four letters; proteins are made up of amino acids which come in 20 forms. So the ribosome is a very clever machine that reads one language and operates in another.
During my time I had some very difficult years, and I had very pronounced competition, all by men.
Even if I tried to fill up the stadium in Ramat Gan, I don't think I could.
For quite a while, I didn't receive a higher academic status. I didn't feel any discrimination against me as a woman scientist, but I hadn't produced a lot of science journal articles.
From the age of 11, I was cleaning floors, washing dishes, making sandwiches and being a cashier. Survival was the name of the game. Life was so hard that I had to struggle to keep up my standards. Under these conditions, I didn't think about science too much.
I am against boycotts in general: boycotts against us as well as anything and everything that can be boycotted.
I don't distinguish between men and women. This is irrelevant to me, and I don't think in these terms.
I don't walk into the lab in the morning thinking, 'I am a woman, and I will carry out an experiment that will conquer the world.' I am a scientist, not male or female. A scientist.
I used ribosomes from very, very robust bacteria under very, very active conditions and found a way - I actually took advantage of research done before me at the Weizmann, the same institute I am now - how to preserve their activity and their integrity while they crystallized.
I wanted to reveal how genetic code is translated into protein. I knew a great application could be for antibiotics, since half of the useful ones target the ribosomes, but I didn't believe I could contribute to it. It was like the next Mount Everest to conquer. It was my dream to contribute something to humanity.
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 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 described as a dreamer, a fantasist, even as the village idiot. I didn't care. What I cared about was convincing people to allow me to go on with my work.
I'm always having to get rid of reporters.
I'm truly glad I've managed to get the public interested in questions about basic research.
If one has curiosity, then one stands the chance of attain a high level of scientific inquiry.
It is a great honor for me to be able to express my sincere gratitude to the Nobel Foundation.
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AuthorName
Ada Yonath
Profession
Scientist
BirthDate
22 June, 1939
Country
Israel
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