The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz, and Ada Yonath for their groundbreaking work on ribosome structure and function. They mapped the atomic structure of the ribosome, the cellular machinery that reads genetic instructions to build proteins - fundamental to understanding life at the molecular level. Kao/Boyle/Smith won Physics, Blackburn won Medicine, and Ostrom won Economics.