Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, born Dorothy Mary Crowfoot, was born in Cairo, Egypt, on May 12, 1910.⁠[1][2]

At the time of her birth her father, John Winter Crowfoot, worked in the Egyptian Education Service; the family later moved to the Sudan, where he became Director of Education and of Antiquities. After retiring from the Sudan in 1926 he devoted himself to archaeology, serving as Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and leading excavations at Mount Ophel, Jerash, Bosra and Samaria.⁠[3]

Her mother, Grace Mary Crowfoot (née Hood), took part in her husband’s archaeological work, became an authority on early weaving, and was a skilled botanist who drew illustrations for the official Flora of the Sudan.⁠[3]

Her interest in chemistry and crystals began at about the age of ten and was encouraged by Dr. A.F. Joseph, who supplied her with chemicals and helped her analyse ilmenite in the Sudan. She visited the Sudan in 1923 and developed a lasting attachment to the country.⁠[3]

From 1921 to 1928 she lived at Geldeston, Norfolk, and attended the Sir John Leman School in Beccles, where she and Norah Pusey were allowed to join the boys’ chemistry class.⁠[3]

Between school and university she spent a season at Jerash drawing mosaics and briefly considered archaeology instead of chemistry.⁠[3]

From 1928 to 1932 she studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. On F.M. Brewer’s advice she chose X-ray crystallography, became H.M. Powell’s first research student and, after a summer in Victor Goldschmidt’s laboratory in Heidelberg, worked on thallium dialkyl halides.⁠[3]

In 1932 she went to Cambridge to work with J.D. Bernal, who was then turning to sterols and strongly shaped her direction. Her aunt Dorothy Hood financed her studies, and Somerville gave her a scholarship of £75.⁠[3]

The University of CambridgeUniversity of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a university in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom. It gives 1209 as its founding date, is made up of Schools, Faculties, Departments and autonomous Colleges, and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry lists her with Newnham and Girton Colleges.⁠[4]

In 1933 Somerville awarded her a research fellowship, the first year to be spent in Cambridge and the second in Oxford. She returned to Oxford in 1934 and remained there, becoming Official Fellow and Tutor in Natural Science at Somerville.⁠[3]

After her return Sir Robert Robinson helped her raise money for X-ray apparatus, and her work was later supported by the Rockefeller and Nuffield Foundations.⁠[3]

In 1937 she received her PhD from the University of Cambridge.⁠[5]

The same year she married Thomas Hodgkin, an authority on African history.⁠[3][5]

Her work on penicillin began in 1942. After four years of intensive work its structure was established; she played a leading part in the X-ray crystallographic work, and several X-ray methods were used for the first time in the project.⁠[3][6]

When her department was divided in 1944 she continued in Chemical Crystallography under Professor C.N. Hinshelwood, and in 1946 she was appointed University lecturer and demonstrator.⁠[3]

In 1946 she took part in the meetings that led to the founding of the International Union of Crystallography.⁠[3]

Her work on vitamin B12 began in 1948, the year the vitamin was isolated, and after eight years its structure was elucidated in 1956.⁠[6][3]

In 1956 she became University Reader in X-ray Crystallography at Oxford.⁠[3]

Her research group was housed in the University Museum until 1958. It grew slowly and was loosely organised, attracting students and visitors from several universities.⁠[3]

In 1960 she was appointed Wolfson Research Professor of the Royal Society.⁠[3]

She was the sole recipient of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded “for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances.” At the time of the award she was affiliated with the University of Oxford and the Royal Society.⁠[7][1]

In the presentation speech G. Hägg of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted that the penicillin structure had been described as a magnificent start to a new era of crystallography and the vitamin B12 structure as “the crowning triumph of X-ray crystallographic analysis.”⁠[6]

On December 11, 1964, she delivered her Nobel Lecture, “The X-ray Analysis of Complicated Molecules.”⁠[8]

She was the third woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the first woman from Cambridge to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Somerville College describes her as the first, and so far only, British woman to win a Nobel Prize for science; she used part of the prize money to establish the college’s on-site nursery.⁠[5][4][9]

In 1969 she determined the structure of the insulin molecule.⁠[2]

She died at Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, England, on July 29, 1994, aged 84.⁠[1][2]

Her research centred on determining the structures of biologically important molecules by X-ray crystallography, including sterols, insulin, penicillin and vitamin B12.⁠[3]

The presentation speech noted that complex structures required large volumes of data and varied mathematical treatment, that electronic computers had greatly widened what was possible while the scientist’s judgement remained essential, and that the vitamin B12 structure could help explain the vitamin’s role in metabolism and might make its synthesis possible.⁠[6]

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947, a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences in 1956 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958.⁠[3]

In 1976 she received the Royal Society’s Copley Medal.⁠[2]

She travelled widely for science, including to China, the United States and the Soviet Union.⁠[3]

She led the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, serving until 1988.⁠[2][5]

Her husband, Thomas Hodgkin, served as Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, where she also worked part of the time. They had three children: the elder son became a mathematician, the daughter a history teacher in Zambia, and the younger son studied botany after a year in India.⁠[3]

She was Chancellor of the University of Bristol from 1970 until 1988. The university lists her among its Nobel laureates.⁠[10]