Early Crystallographic Investigations by Nobel Laureate

Dorothy Hodgkin 

Jenny P. Glusker

ACA Meeting, Albuquerque, NM28 May 2014

Potassiu

The GOOGLE entry showed a model rather like that shown on the left.

Potassium benzylpenicillin

Early Home LifeDorothy Mary Crowfoot was born in Cairo, Egypt on 12 May 1910.

She was the daughter of John Winter Crowfoot and Grace Mary Crowfoot née Hood.

Her father was an egyptologist and historian. He served with the Egyptian Ministry of Education. Later he became the Principal of Gordon College at Khartoum and was Director of Education and Antiquities in the Sudan.

Her mother was an expert in ancient textiles.

For the first four years of her life she lived in Asia Minor, returning to England only a few months each year. She spent the period of World War I in the UK in the care of relatives. She traveled abroad frequently to visit her parents when they were in Cairo and Khartoum.

Education and ResearchDorothy was educated at the Sir John Leman School, Beccles, Suffolk. She developed a passion for chemistry at an early age, encouraged by her mother.

Dorothy studied at Somerville College, Oxford, 1928-1931, one of the five women’s colleges. Course work was coeducational.

Dorothy studied for a Ph.D. (1936) at Newnham College. Cambridge 1932-1934, under the tutelage of John Desmond Bernal, where she learned of the potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structures of molecules relevant to biological problems.

She started her independent career in Oxford and was appointed a research fellow at Somerville College in 1933, becoming Fellow and Tutor there in 1936.

She was appointed a University lecturer in 1946, University Reader in 1955 and Wolfson Research Professor of the Royal Society in 1960, all at Oxford University.

Somerville College

Private LifeDorothy's scientific mentor J.D. Bernal greatly influenced

her life both scientifically and politically. She always referred to him as "Sage" and admired him unreservedly.

In 1937, Dorothy married Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, son of Robin H. Hodgkin, provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, and a cousin of Professor A. L. Hodgkin, a Nobel prize winner in 1963. Thomas 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.

Luke (born 1938) is a topologist at King’s College, London. He also taught at the University of Algiers and Princeton University.

Elizabeth (born 1941) taught at a girl’s school in Zambia in 1964. She works for Amnesty International and has been very active in Viet Nam and the Sudan.

Tobias (born 1946) works for the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute in Rome, Italy. He is interested in the conservation and use of genetic diversity in useful plants

Dorothy knew 9 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.

Dorothy’s drawing of a mosaic and its symmetry.(Yale University Art Gallery, Gerasa Collection)

Kathleen Yardley Lonsdale. 1903-1971

First (with Marjory Stephenson) woman Fellow of the Royal Society, 1945

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire 1956First woman president of the IUCr, 1966First woman president of the British Association

for the Advancement of Science, 1967Structure of benzene (in hexamethylbenzene)FerroelectricityInternational Tables for X-ray Crystallography

Dorothy Hodgkin, said of her: 'There is a sense in which she appeared to own the whole of crystallography in her time'. 

(Photo credit: Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)

Helen Dick Megaw, Assistant Director of Research, CavendishLaboratory, Cambridge, England 1907 – 2002. (Richard Froggatt)

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin1910 – 1994(Granta Books, London)

Cholesterol - 1945

Penicillin - 1949

Vitamin B12 - 1964

Insulin – 1969

(Courtesy ACA)

University Museum, Oxford

In 1860 the famous "evolution debate" between Bishop Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley took place in the Museum.