Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure ofpenicillin as previously surmised byEdward Abraham andErnst Boris Chain; and mapping the structure ofvitamin B12, for which in 1964 she became the third woman to win theNobel Prize in Chemistry. Hodgkin also elucidated the structure ofinsulin in 1969 after 35 years of work.[12]
Hodgkin used the name "Dorothy Crowfoot" until twelve years after marryingThomas Lionel Hodgkin, when she began using "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin". Hodgkin is referred to as "Dorothy Hodgkin" by the Royal Society (when referring to its sponsorship of the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship), and by Somerville College.The National Archives of the United Kingdom refer to her as "Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin".
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot was born inCairo,Egypt,[13] the oldest of the four daughters whose parents worked in North Africa and the middle East in the colonial administration and later as archaeologists. Dorothy came from a distinguished family of archaeologists.[14] Her parents wereJohn Winter Crowfoot (1873–1959), working for the country's Ministry of Education, and his wifeGrace Mary (née Hood) (1877–1957), known to friends and family as Molly.[15] The family lived in Cairo during the winter months, returning to England each year to avoid the hotter part of the season in Egypt.[16]
In 1914, Hodgkin's mother left her (age 4) and her two younger sistersJoan (age 2) and Elisabeth (age 7 months) with their Crowfoot grandparents nearWorthing, and returned to her husband in Egypt. They spent much of their childhood apart from their parents, yet they were supportive from afar. Her mother would encourage Dorothy to pursue the interest in crystals first displayed at the age of 10. In 1923, Dorothy and her sister would study pebbles that they had found in nearby streams using portable mineral analysis kit. Their parents then moved south to Sudan where, until 1926, her father was in charge of education and archaeology. Her mother's four brothers were killed in World War I and as a result she became an ardent supporter of the newLeague of Nations.[17][18]
In 1921 Hodgkin's father entered her in theSir John Leman Grammar School inBeccles,England,[10] where she was one of two girls allowed to study chemistry.[19] Only once, when she was 13, did she make an extended visit to her parents, then living inKhartoum, the capital of Sudan, where her father was Principal ofGordon College. When she was 14, her distant cousin, the chemistCharles Harington (later Sir Charles), recommended D. S. Parsons'Fundamentals of Biochemistry.[20] Resuming the pre-war pattern, her parents lived and worked abroad for part of the year, returning to England and their children for several months every summer. In 1926, on his retirement from the Sudan Civil Service, her father took the post of Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, where he and her mother remained until 1935.[21]
In 1928, Hodgkin joined her parents at the archaeological site ofJerash, in present-day Jordan, where she documented the patterns of mosaics from multiple Byzantine-era Churches dated to the 5th–6th centuries. She spent more than a year finishing the drawings as she started her studies in Oxford, while also conducting chemical analyses ofglass tesserae from the same site.[22] Her attention to detail through the creation of precise scale drawings of these mosaics mirrors her subsequent work in recognising and documenting patterns in chemistry. Hodgkin enjoyed the experience of field archaeology so much that she considered giving up chemistry in favour of archaeology.[23] Her drawings are archived by Yale University.[14]
Hodgkin developed a passion for chemistry from a young age, and her mother, a proficient botanist, fostered her interest in the sciences. On her 16th birthday her mother gave her a book by W. H. Bragg onX-ray crystallography, "Concerning the Nature of Things", which helped her decide her future.[24] She was further encouraged by the chemist A.F. Joseph, a family friend who also worked in Sudan.[25]
Her state school education did not includeLatin, then required for entrance toOxbridge. Her Leman School headmaster, George Watson, gave her personal tuition in the subject, enabling her to pass theUniversity of Oxford entrance examination.[25]
When Hodgkin was asked in later life to name her childhood heroes, she named three women: first and foremost, her mother,Molly; the medical missionaryMary Slessor; andMargery Fry, the Principal ofSomerville College.[26]
In 1928 at age 18 Hodgkin enteredSomerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry.[25] She graduated in 1932 with a first-class honours degree, the third woman at this institution to achieve this distinction.[27]
Dorothy Hodgkin as Chancellor of the University of Bristol
In the autumn of that year, she began studying for aPhD atNewnham College, Cambridge, under the supervision ofJohn Desmond Bernal.[28] It was then that she became aware of the potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure ofproteins. She was working with Bernal on the technique's first application to the analysis of a biological substance,pepsin.[29] The pepsin experiment is largely credited to Hodgkin, however she always made it clear that it was Bernal who initially took the photographs and gave her additional key insights.[30] Her PhD was awarded in 1937 for research on X-ray crystallography and the chemistry ofsterols.[1]
A three dimensional contour map of the electron density of penicillin derived fromx-ray diffraction. The points of highest density show the positions of individual atoms in the penicillin. This device was used by Hodgkin to deduce the structure.Molecular model of penicillin built by Hodgkin using the electron density contour maps behind the modelMolecular structure ofvitamin B12, as established by Hodgkin
In 1933 Hodgkin was awarded aresearch fellowship by Somerville College, and in 1934, she moved back to Oxford. She started teaching chemistry with her own lab equipment. The college appointed her its first fellow and tutor in chemistry in 1936, a post which she held until 1977. In the 1940s, one of her students was Margaret Roberts (laterMargaret Thatcher)[31] who, whilePrime Minister, hung a portrait of Hodgkin in her office atDowning Street out of respect for her former teacher.[25] Hodgkin was, however a life-longLabour Party supporter.[32]
In April 1953, together withSydney Brenner,Jack Dunitz,Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton, Hodgkin was one of the first people to travel from Oxford to Cambridge to see the model of thedouble helix structure ofDNA, constructed byFrancis Crick andJames Watson, which was based on data and technique acquired byMaurice Wilkins andRosalind Franklin. According to the late Dr Beryl Oughton (married name, Rimmer), they drove to Cambridge in two cars after Hodgkin announced that they were off to see the model of the structure of DNA.
Hodgkin became areader at Oxford in 1955[33][34] and she was given a fully modern laboratory the following year.[35] In 1960, Hodgkin was appointed theRoyal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, a position she held until 1970.[36] This provided her salary, research expenses and research assistance to continue her work at theUniversity of Oxford. She was afellow ofWolfson College, Oxford, from 1977 to 1983.[37]
Hodgkin was particularly noted for discovering three-dimensionalbiomolecular structures.[11] In 1945, working with C.H. (Harry) Carlisle, she published the first such structure of asteroid, cholesteryl iodide (having worked with cholesteryls since the days of her doctoral studies).[38]
In 1945, Hodgkin and her colleagues, including biochemistBarbara Low, solved the structure ofpenicillin, demonstrating, contrary to scientific opinion at the time, that it contains aβ-lactam ring. The work was not published until 1949.[39][nb 1]
In 1948, Hodgkin first encounteredvitamin B12,[40] one of the most structurally complex vitamins known, and created new crystals. Vitamin B12 had first been discovered at Merck earlier that year. It had a structure at the time that was almost completely unknown, and when Hodgkin discovered it contained cobalt, she realized the structure actualization could be determined by X-ray crystallography analysis. The large size of the molecule, and the fact that the atoms were largely unaccounted for—aside from cobalt—posed a challenge in structure analysis that had not been previously explored.[41]
From these crystals, she deduced the presence of aring structure because the crystals werepleochroic, a finding which she later confirmed using X-ray crystallography. The B12 study published by Hodgkin was described byLawrence Bragg as being as significant "as breaking the sound barrier".[41][42] Scientists from Merck had previously crystallised B12, but had published only refractive indices of the substance.[43] The final structure of B12, for which Hodgkin was later awarded the Nobel Prize, was published in 1955[44] and 1956.[45]
Insulin was one of Hodgkin's most extraordinary research projects. It began in 1934 when she was offered a small sample of crystalline insulin byRobert Robinson. Thehormone captured her imagination because of the intricate and wide-ranging effect it has in the body. However, at this stage X-ray crystallography had not been developed far enough to cope with the complexity of the insulin molecule. She and others spent many years improving the technique.
It took 35 years after taking her first photograph of an insulin crystal for X-ray crystallography and computing techniques to be able to tackle larger and more complex molecules like insulin. Hodgkin's dream of unlocking the structure of insulin was put on hold until 1969 when she was finally able to work with her team of young, international scientists to uncover the structure for the first time. Hodgkin's work with insulin was instrumental in paving the way for insulin to be mass-produced and used on a large scale for treatment of both type one and type two diabetes.[46] She went on to cooperate with other laboratories active in insulin research, giving advice, and traveling the world giving talks about insulin and its importance for the future ofdiabetes. Solving the structure of insulin had two important implications for the treatment of diabetes, both making mass production of insulin possible and allowing scientists to alter the structure of insulin to create even better drug options for patients going forward.[46]
Hodgkin's soft-spoken, gentle and modest demeanor hid a steely determination to achieve her ends, whatever obstacles might stand in her way. She inspired devotion in her students and colleagues, even the most junior of whom knew her simply as Dorothy. Her structural studies of biologically importantmolecules set standards for a field that was very much in development during her work life. She made fundamental contributions to the understanding of how these molecules carry out their tasks in living system.
Hodgkin's mentorProfessorJohn Desmond Bernal greatly influenced her life: scientifically, politically, and personally. Bernal was a key scientific adviser to the UK government during the Second World War. He was also an open and vocal member of theCommunist Party and a faithful supporter of theSoviet regime until itsinvasion of Hungary in 1956. He was a chemist who believed in equal opportunity for women. In his laboratory, Hodgkin extended work that he began on biological molecules including sterols. She helped him to make the first X-ray diffraction studies of pepsin andcrystalline protein. Hodgkin always referred to him as "Sage". They were lovers before she met Thomas Hodgkin.[47] The marriages of both Dorothy and Bernal were unconventional by the standards of the present and of those days.[48]
In 1934, at the age of 24, Dorothy began experiencing pain in her hands causing them to become swollen and distorted. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and went to a clinic in Buxton for thermal baths and gold treatments.[49] After some treatment, Hodgkin returned to the lab, where she struggled to use the main switch on the x-ray equipment due to the condition of her hands. She had to create a lever on her own in order to operate the switch.[50] Her condition would become progressively worse and debilitating over time, with deformities in both her hands and feet, and prolonged periods of pain. While Hodgkin spent a great deal of time in a wheelchair in her later years, she remained scientifically active in her career.[51]
In 1937, Dorothy Crowfoot married Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, an historian's son, who was then teaching an adult-education class in mining and industrial communities in the north of England after he resigned from theColonial Office.[52] He was an intermittent member of theCommunist Party and later wrote several major works on African politics and history, becoming a well-known lecturer atBalliol College in Oxford.[53] As his health was too poor for active military service, he continued working throughout World War II, returning to Oxford on the weekends, where his wife remained working onpenicillin. The couple had three children: Luke[54] (1938 – October 2020), Elizabeth[55] (born 1941) and Toby[56] (born 1946). The oldest son, Luke, became a mathematics instructor at the new University of Warwick. Their daughter, Elizabeth, followed her father's career as a historian. Their younger son, Toby, studied botany and agriculture. Overall, Thomas Hodgkin spent extended periods of time in West Africa, where he was an enthusiastic supporter and chronicler of the emerging postcolonial states. Thomas Hodgkin died inGreece on 25 March 1982.
Hodgkin published as "Dorothy Crowfoot" until 1949, when she was persuaded byHans Clarke's secretary to use her married name on a chapter she contributed toThe Chemistry of Penicillin. By then she had been married for 12 years, given birth to three children and been elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS).[57]
Thereafter she would publish as "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin", and this was the name used by theNobel Foundation in its award to her and the biography it included among otherNobel Prize recipients;[57] it is also what theScience History Institute calls her.[58][59] For simplicity's sake, Hodgkin is referred to as "Dorothy Hodgkin" by the Royal Society, when referring to its sponsorship of the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship,[60] and by Somerville College, after it inaugurated the annual lectures in her honour.
The National Archives of the United Kingdom refer to her as "Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin"; on a variety of plaques commemorating places where she worked or lived, e.g. 94Woodstock Road, Oxford, she is "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin". In 2022, the Department of Biochemistry in Oxford renamed its much expanded building after Hodgkin, calling it the "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building".[61]
Between the 1950s and the 1970s, Hodgkin established and maintained lasting contacts with scientists in her field abroad—at the Institute of Crystallography inMoscow; in India; and with the Chinese group working inBeijing andShanghai on the structure of insulin.
Her first visit to China was in 1959. Over the next quarter century, she travelled there seven more times, the last visit a year before her death.[62] Particularly memorable was the visit in 1971 after the Chinese group themselves independently solved the structure of insulin, later than Hodgkin's team but to a higher resolution. During the subsequent three years, 1972–1975, when she was President of theInternational Union of Crystallography she was unable to persuade the Chinese authorities, however, to permit the country's scientists to become members of the Union and attend its meetings.
Her relations with a supposed scientist in another "People's Democracy" had less happy results. At the age of 73, Hodgkin wrote a foreword to the English edition ofStereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene, published byRobert Maxwell as the work ofElena Ceaușescu, wife of Romania's communist dictator. Hodgkin wrote of the author's "outstanding achievements" and "impressive" career.[63] Following the overthrow of Ceausescu during theRomanian Revolution of 1989, it was revealed that Elena Ceausescu had neither finished secondary school nor attended university. Her scientific credentials were ahoax, and the publication in question was written for her by a team of scientists to obtain a fraudulent doctorate.[64]
Because of Hodgkin's political activities, and her husband's association with the Communist Party, she was banned from entering the US in 1953 and subsequently not allowed to visit the country except byCIA waiver.[65]
In 1961 Thomas became an advisor toKwame Nkrumah,President of Ghana, a country he visited for extended periods before Nkrumah's ouster in 1966. Hodgkin was in Ghana with her husband when they received the news that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize.
She acquired from her mother, Molly, a concern aboutsocial inequalities and a determination to do what she could to prevent armed conflict. Dorothy became particularly concerned about the threat of nuclear war. In 1976, she became president of thePugwash Conference and served longer than any who preceded or succeeded her in this post. She stepped down in 1988, the year after theIntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty imposed "a global ban on short- and long-range nuclear weapons systems, as well as an intrusive verification regime".[3] She accepted theLenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government in 1987 in recognition of her work for peace and disarmament.
Due to distance, Hodgkin decided not to attend the 1987 Congress of the International Union of Crystallography in Australia. However, despite increasing frailty, she astounded close friends and family by going to Beijing for the 1993 Congress, where she was welcomed by all.
A portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin byBryan Organ was commissioned by private subscription to become part of the collection of the Royal Society. Accepted by the president of the society on 25 March 1982, it was the first portrait of a woman Fellow to be included in the Society's collection.[71][72]
Hodgkin won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and is the only British woman scientist to have been awarded aNobel Prize in any of the three sciences it recognizes.[75][76]
In 1965 she was appointed to theOrder of Merit. She was the second woman to receive the Order.[77]
In 1966, she was awarded theIota Sigma Pi National Honorary Member for her significant contribution.[78]
In 1993, an asteroid (5422) discovered on 23 December 1982 by L.G. Karachkina (at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, M.P.C. 22509, in the USSR) was named "Hodgkin" in her honour.[82]
TheRoyal Society awards the Dorothy HodgkinFellowship (named in her honour) "for outstanding scientists at an early stage of their research career who require a flexible working pattern due to personal circumstances, such as parenting or caring responsibilities or health-related reasons."[60]
In 2012, Hodgkin was featured in theBBC Radio 4 seriesThe New Elizabethans to mark thediamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. In this series a panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named her among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character".[85]
In 2015 Hodgkin's 1949 paperThe X-ray Crystallographic Investigation of the Structure of Penicillin was honoured by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society presented to the University of Oxford (England). This research is notable for its groundbreaking use of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of complex natural products, in this instance, of penicillin.[86][87]
Since 1999, the Oxford International Women's Festival has presented the annual Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture, usually in March, in honour of Hodgkin's work.[88] The Lecture is a collaboration between Oxford AWiSE (Association for Women in Science & Engineering), Somerville College and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
^"Dorothy Hodgkin 1910–1994"."A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries" a 1997PBS documentary and accompanying book.Archived from the original on 24 July 2017. Retrieved26 August 2017.
^Georgina Ferry,Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life, Granta Books: London, 1998, p. 20.
^Crowfoot, D.; Bunn, Charles W.;Low, Barabara W.; Turner-Jones, Annette (1949). "X-ray crystallographic investigation of the structure of penicillin". In Clarke, H.T.; Johnson, J.R.; Robinson, R. (eds.).Chemistry of Penicillin. Princeton University Press. pp. 310–67.doi:10.1515/9781400874910-012.ISBN9781400874910.Archived from the original on 6 May 2022. Retrieved6 May 2022.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Hodgkin, Dorothy Crowfoot; Pickworth, Jenny; Robertson, John H.; Trueblood, Kenneth N.; Prosen, Richard J.; White, John G. (1955). "Structure of Vitamin B12: The Crystal Structure of the Hexacarboxylic Acid derived from B12 and the Molecular Structure of the Vitamin".Nature.176 (4477):325–28.Bibcode:1955Natur.176..325H.doi:10.1038/176325a0.PMID13253565.S2CID4220926.
^Anon (2017)."Professional Awards".iotasigmapi.info. Iota Sigma Pi: National Honor Society for Women in Chemistry. Archived fromthe original on 23 March 2019. Retrieved16 December 2014.
^"2015 Awardees".American Chemical Society, Division of the History of Chemistry. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Chemical Sciences. 2015.Archived from the original on 21 June 2016. Retrieved1 July 2016.
^"Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award"(PDF).American Chemical Society, Division of the History of Chemistry. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Chemical Sciences. 2015.Archived(PDF) from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved1 July 2016.
^"2019 Festival".Oxford International Women's Festival. 31 March 2018.Archived from the original on 9 October 2019. Retrieved9 October 2019.
Dodson, Guy; Glusker, Jenny P.; Sayre, David (eds.) (1981).Structural Studies on Molecules of Biological Interest: A Volume in Honour of Professor Dorothy Hodgkin. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hudson, Gill (1991). "Unfathering the Thinkable: Gender, Science and Pacificism in the 1930s".Science and Sensibility: Gender and Scientific Enquiry, 1780–1945, ed. Marina Benjamin, 264–86. Oxford: Blackwell.
Four interviews with Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin recorded between 1987 and 1989 in partnership with theRoyal College of Physicians are held in the Medical Sciences Video Archive in the Special Collections atOxford Brookes University:
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