NEWSLETTER

06
S potlight
Professor Ada Yonath,
Nobel Chemistry Prize Laureate Visits SCU
Professor Ada Yonath, an Israeli scien-
tist and Laureate of the Nobel Prize
for Chemistry, and Professor Zhen
Huang, a tenured professor of chemistry
and biochemistry and advisor of Ph.D.
candidates, Georgia State University, visited
SCU. Professor Li Guangxian, Executive
Vice-President of SCU, welcomed them.
Officials form the International Office and
the School of Life Science of SCU also at-
tended the reception.
Executive Vice-President Li ex-
tended a warm welcome to Professor
Yonath. He introduced the history of
SCU, the extensive range of academic
and research programs of the school,
its rapid development, the top scien-
tists, some of whom being members
of the Chinese Academy of Science
and the Chinese Academy of Engi-
neering, recruited by SCU, and the
school’s numerous achievements in
the field of art, humanities, science,
engineering and medicine.
Afterwards, Professor Yonath
delivered a fascinating academic
presentation entitled From Basic
Science to Advanced Clinical Com-
pounds to the students of SCU. First
of all, Professor Yonath showed a
chart displaying the trend of average
life expectancy in the world. Then
Professor Yonath introduced the suc-
cess and the latest progress her lab
had accomplished in the research
of how the antibiotics combined
with the Ribonsome of the patho-
gen, how the antibiotics blocked
Sichuan University Newsletter
the protein synthesis process of the
pathogen, and how drug tolerance
was formed. She also shared with
SCU students anecdotes about the
analysis of the crystal structure of
the Ribonsome and encouraged the
students to become fearless young
scientists and attack the most chal-
lenging problems of science. After
her presentation, Professor Yonath
took questions from the audience.
Professor Ada Yonath Biography
Ada E. Yonath is an Israeli scientist. She
graduated from Hebrew University of Jerusa-
lem with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in
1962, and a master’s degree in biochemistry
in 1964. In 1968, she earned a Ph.D. at the
Weizmann Institute of Science. Then Yonath
accepted postdoctoral positions at the Carnegie
Mellon University (1969) and MIT (1970).
In 2006, Yonath won the Wolf Prize in Chem-
istry (co-recipient with George Feher) “for in-
genious structural discoveries of the ribosomal
machinery of peptide-bond formation and the
light-driven primary processes in photosynthe-
sis.” The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is awarded to
scientists who have not won the Nobel Prize of
Chemistry, but who have made great contri-
bution to research in Chemistry. It is the one
of the most prestigious honors in the field of
chemistry.