Linus Pauling is the only person to have received two unshared Nobel Prizes - in chemistry and peace. He used quantum mechanics to understand and describe chemical bonding. Later he campaigned vehemently against nuclear weapons and spearheaded a petition to ban nuclear testing.

Today we remember chemistry laureate Ada Yonath who passed away yesterday at the age of 87. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the chemical foundations for life were a mystery. Today we know how many of the most important processes function, all the way down to the atomic level. This is due in part to the work of biochemist, Ada Yonath. In the 1970s, Yonath began a project that culminated in 2000 with her successful mapping (together with other researchers) of the structure of ribosomes – the cell’s own protein factory – by using x-ray crystallography. Among other applications, this has been important in the production of antibiotics. In 2009, Yonath shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. Read more: bit.ly/4kJscDU