In 2009, Ada Yonath was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz, for her pioneering work on the structure and function of the ribosome. This groundbreaking achievement opened an entirely new chapter in structural biology and revealed, in unprecedented molecular detail, how genetic information is translated into proteins.

The ESRF was privileged to play a pivotal role in this scientific journey. From the facility's earliest days, Ada Yonath and her group from the Weizmann Institute of Science were among the most frequent visitors to our macromolecular crystallography beamlines, at times bringing around 500 samples every month for analysis. Datasets collected on ID13, and later on the ID14 and ID23 beamlines, underpinned many of the group's landmark results. The extreme radiation sensitivity of ribosomal crystals drove Ada and her collaborators to adopt cryo-macromolecular crystallography, a methodology that went on to transform structural biology worldwide.

Ada Yonath gave generously of her time to the ESRF beyond her own experiments. As a member of the ESRF Science Advisory Committee, her feedback directly helped shape successive upgrades of our instrumentation.

Her connection to the ESRF was one she acknowledged publicly on many occasions. At a reception held in her honour at the ESRF shortly after the Nobel announcement, she thanked the facility "that accepted me also when it was almost clear that it would not work and which (nonetheless) let me try again and again and improved the beamlines according to my comments constantly". Years later, when she joined us for the ESRF’s 30th anniversary celebrations, she reflected on the importance of the facility: “Having access to the ESRF has been of utmost importance in my research, since we could obtain the data required for determining the ribosome structure. The ESRF is the facility where we collected our best data. This is where we did our real science.”

Beyond her extraordinary scientific achievements and legacy, Ada Yonath was a source of inspiration for generations of researchers around the world. Her determination, creativity, and unwavering belief in the value of curiosity-driven research encouraged countless young scientists to pursue scientific careers. She was renowned for her intellectual courage, and her willingness to pursue questions others considered impossible to answer.

That same openness of spirit shaped her engagement with new methods. In November 2017, only weeks after the Nobel Prize in Chemistry had been awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for the development of cryo-EM, Ada Yonath was the guest of honour at the inauguration of CM01, the ESRF's first cryo-electron microscopy beamline, jointly operated with EMBL, IBS and ILL. Having herself pioneered cryogenic methods in X-ray crystallography, she hailed cryo-EM as "the next step in the resolution revolution".

One of the relatively few women to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, a laureate of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award and the recipient of numerous honours throughout her decades-long career, Ada Yonath was also a powerful role model. Through her example, she helped open doors for future generations of women in science and demonstrated that excellence, imagination and persistence know no boundaries.

Many within the ESRF community remember not only Ada Yonath’s scientific vision, but also her enthusiasm, generosity and extraordinary passion for science. Her presence and her words left a lasting mark on our facility and on all those who had the privilege of meeting and working with her.

Ada Yonath’s legacy lives on not only in the countless discoveries that have built upon her work, but also in the courage of her scientific journey, in the many scientists she mentored, and in the generations she inspired to question, discover and explore the unknown. Her science transformed our understanding of life at the molecular level. Her example will continue to inspire generations of scientists to come.