Quotes from Ada Yonath

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.

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 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.

The Weizmann Institute showed me respect and didn't require many administrative tasks, so I was quite independent. I did what I wanted.

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.

My memories from my childhood are centered on my father's medical conditions alongside my constant desire to understand the principles of the nature around me.

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.

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.

Problems should be solved by talking and not in an aggressive manner.

My kindergarten teacher encouraged me to learn, as did my school headmaster, who gave me a grant to study.

The ribosome is a machine that gets instructions from the genetic code and operates chemically in order to produce the product.

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.

I don't distinguish between men and women. This is irrelevant to me, and I don't think in these terms.

When a man sits in our jails for a number of years, and around him friends and family become angry, that is how we create terrorists.

I am against boycotts in general: boycotts against us as well as anything and everything that can be boycotted.

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.

Proteins are constantly being degraded. Therefore, simultaneous production of proteins is required.

My neighborhood didn't really encourage women, though it didn't prevent women from progressing, either.

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.

Words originating from the verb 'to die' were frequently used when I described my initial plans to determine the ribosome structure.

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.

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 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'm always having to get rid of reporters.