Thomas Arthur Steitz (born August 23, 1940) is the
Sterling Professor of
Molecular Biophysics and
Biochemistry,
Howard Hughes Medical Institute,
Yale University,
New Haven.
Steitz was awarded the 2009
Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and
Ada Yonath "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". Steitz also won the Gairdner International Award in 2007 "for his studies on the structure and function of the
ribosome which showed that the
peptidyl transferase was an
RNA catalyzed reaction, and for revealing the mechanism of inhibition of this function by
antibiotics".