Nobel Prize award Chemistry-2009
October 07, 2009
-Karthik Gurumurthy
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 wasn't awarded to a single person, but rather to three scientists jointly:
- Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, born in India in 1952, completed his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside in 1976.
- Thomas A. Steitz, born in the United States in 1940, earned his PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Yale University in 1967.
- Ada E. Yonath, born in Israel in 1939, received her PhD in Crystallography from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1968.
They were awarded the prize today for their groundbreaking work on "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". The ribosome is a tiny cellular machine responsible for translating genetic information into proteins, essential for all living things. Their research provided detailed 3D structures of the ribosome, unlocking crucial insights into its function and paving the way for new antibiotic development.
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