Mapping the atom-by-atom structure of the ribosome won a Nobel Prize in 2009

The ribosome is the molecular machine inside every living cell that reads genetic instructions and assembles proteins. Using X-ray crystallography, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath independently worked out its structure down to the position of individual atoms, winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and underpinning how many modern antibiotics are designed.

— Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, Ada E. Yonath, The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 — Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2009