Everything about Dorothy Hodgkin totally explained
Dorothy Mary Hodgkin,
OM,
FRS (
12 May 1910 –
29 July 1994) was a British founder of
protein crystallography; prior to her marriage, she was known as Dorothy Mary Crowfoot.
She pioneered the technique of
X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three dimensional structures of biomolecules. Among her most influential discoveries are the determination of the structure of
penicillin and
vitamin B12, for which she was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1969, after 35 years of work and five years after winning the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Hodgkin was able to decipher the structure of insulin. She is regarded as one of the foremost scientists in the field of X-Ray crystallography studies of natural molecules. Besides her extraordinary scientific abilities, she was unassuming, very communicative, and passionate about social inequalities and peace.
Timeline of her discoveries
Hodgkin determined the three-dimensional structures of the following biomolecules:
The list isn't exhaustive, it rather highlights major milestones.
Early years
She was born Dorothy Mary Crowfoot in
May 12,
1910 in
Cairo,
Egypt, to John Crowfoot, excavator and scholar of classics, and Grace Mary Crowfoot
née Hood. For the first four years of her life she lived as an English expatriate in Asia Minor, returning to England only a few months each year. She spent the period of
World War I in the UK under the care of relatives and friends, but separated from her parents. After the war, her mother decided to stay home in England and educate her children, a period that Hodgkin later described as the happiest in her life.
In 1921, she entered the Sir
John Leman Grammar School in
Beccles,
Suffolk. She traveled abroad frequently to visit her parents in Cairo and
Khartoum. Both her father and her mother had a strong influence with their
Puritan ethic of selflessness and service to humanity which reverberated in her later achievements.
Education and research
She developed a passion for chemistry from a young age, and her mother fostered her interest in science in general. Her excellent early education prepared her well for university. At age 18 she started studying
chemistry at
Somerville College, Oxford, then one of the
University of Oxford colleges for women only.
She also studied at the
University of Cambridge under the tutelage of
John Desmond Bernal, where she became aware of the potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of
proteins.
In 1934, she moved back to Oxford and two years later, in 1936, she became a research fellow at Somerville College, a post which she held until 1977. In 1960 she was appointed Wolfson Research Professor at the
Royal Society.
Insulin structure
Insulin was one of her most extraordinary research projects. It began in 1934 when she was offered a small sample of crystalline insulin by
Robert Robinson. The
hormone captured her imagination because of the intricate and wide-ranging effect it has in the body. However, at this stage X-ray crystallography hadn't been developed far enough to cope with the complexity of the insulin molecule. She and others spent many years improving the technique. Larger and more complex molecules were being tackled (see timeline above) until in 1969 - 35 years later - the structure of insulin was finally resolved. But her quest wasn't finished then. She cooperated with other laboratories active in insulin research, gave advice, and travelled the world giving talks about insulin and its importance for
diabetes. She considered solving the structure of insulin her greatest scientific achievement.
Private life
Hodgkin's scientific mentor
J.D. Bernal greatly influenced her life both scientifically and politically. He was a distinguished scientist of great repute in the scientific world, a member of the
Communist party, and a faithful supporter of successive
Soviet regimes until their
invasion of Hungary. She always referred to him as "Sage" and loved and admired him unreservedly; intermittently, they were lovers. The conventional marriages of both Bernal and Hodgkin were far from smooth.
In 1937, Dorothy married
Thomas Hodgkin who was also a one-time member of the Communist party, as well as a charming, intelligent, energetic and impulsive suitor. She also loved him and always consulted him concerning important problems and decisions. Dorothy bore quietly the many difficulties of these situations. He later had a varied career as a schoolteacher, worker's educationist, historian and economist. He became an advisor in 1961 to
Kwame Nkrumah, President of
Ghana, where he remained for extended periods, often visited by her. The couple had three children. All three children are still alive today. One has a girl named Alexandra Dorothy after their grandmother.
Social activities
Despite her scientific specialisation and excellence she was by no means a single-minded and one-sided scientist. She received many honours but was more interested in exchange with other scientists. She often employed her intelligence to think about other people's problems and was concerned about social inequalities and stopping conflict. As a consequence she was President of Pugwash from 1976 to 1988.
Honours
Apart from the Nobel Prize, she was a recipient of the
Order of Merit, a
Fellow of the
Royal Society, The
Lenin Peace Prize, and was
Chancellor of
Bristol University from 1970 to 1988.
Council offices in the
London Borough of Hackney are named Dorothy Hodgkin House.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dorothy Hodgkin'.
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