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Nobel Laureate Ada Yonath Dies at 87

Courtroom-sketch editorial illustration of Nobel laureate Ada Yonath at a laboratory bench behind stacked sample trays, raising a transparent lab vessel beside a microscope and a molecular-structure drawing, rendered in warm ochre and slate-blue pastel with cross-hatching on sepia newsprint.

Prof. Ada Yonath, the pioneering Israeli crystallographer who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, died at 87, the Weizmann Institute announced. Yonath used X-ray crystallography to reveal the three-dimensional structure of bacterial ribosomes, work that helped explain antibiotic action and resistance after years of experiments. She received the Israel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 and became an Institute Professor at Weizmann. The institute said she remained scientifically active until her final days; President Alon Chen described her as an exceptional scientist who pursued paths others considered impossible.

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