Mapping the position of thousands upon thousands of ribosomes—those protein powerhouses of living organisms—isn't easy. In fact, in the 1970s, when Ada Yonath first began generating X-ray crystallographic images of the ribosome structure, the task was considered next to impossible. Fast-forward to present day. Yonath (a postdoctoral fellow at the Mellon Institute in 1969) is named one of three winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009. Yonath joins 16 other Nobel Prize winners with ties to Carnegie Mellon, including Oliver Eaton Williamson (TPR'63), who won this year's Nobel in economic sciences. (Williamson will be the subject of an upcoming feature in Carnegie Mellon Today.)
—Elizabeth May
