Ada Yonath

“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.”

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

“My parents were Zionists born in Poland. My father was a rabbi who didn't know much about science and ran a grocery store in the neighborhood with my mother's help.”

“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.”

“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.”

“שרידת המתאימים והברירה הטבעית שיחקו תפקיד חשוב בעולם הפרה־ביוטי אף כי התכונות הללו משויכות בעיקר לאבולוציה של המינים.”

“אני רוצה לעשות משהו שיתרום לישראל ולאנושות, להגביר את הגישה החיובית למדע. חשוב לי להופיע, אבל לא בהיבט האישי. אני לא רוצה להופיע כבדרנית אלא כאדם שרוצה לעודד מחשבה וסקרנות.”

“הפרס מביא לכך שאנשים מתעניינים בנושאים אחרים מאלו שבדרך כלל על סדר היום.”

“אני לא עושה חלוקה בין גברים לנשים, זה לא רלוונטי ואני לא חושבת במונחים האלה, אבל ברור שמבחינה סטטיסטית יש הרבה יותר גברים בתחום מאשר נשים.”

“העבודה במעבדה מצטיירת כדורשנית ומשעממת, והסלבס למיניהם גונבים את כל תשומת הלב.”

“מדען צריך לעבוד מתוך סקרנות ואם יש לו סקרנות להבנת תהליכים משמעותיים, יש לו סיכוי גם לזכות בפרס נובל.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“During my time I had some very difficult years, and I had very pronounced competition, all by men.”

“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.”

“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'm always having to get rid of reporters.”

“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.”

“Even if I tried to fill up the stadium in Ramat Gan, I don't think I could.”