She received her bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1962. She received her master's degree in biochemistry in 1964. She got both degrees from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She received her Ph.D. in X-Ray Crystallography at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1968. Yonath made the first protein crystallography lab at the Weizmann Institute. Her work showed the function of ribosomes. Yonath worked at Carnegie-Mellon University and MIT for several years. She stayed as Weizmann Institute for the rest of her career.