Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
This master crystallographer’s expert analysis made crystals clear.
Champ of crystallography who advanced HUMAN HEALTHCARE
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Molecular model of vitam
Crystal course
Ilmenite was the first mineral Hodgkin studied as a child.
The oldest daughter of an archaeologist and botanist, Hodgkin was born in 1910 in Cairo, Egypt. She became interested in chemistry and crystals at the age of 10. After attending school in Suffolk, England, she went to Somerville College at the University of Oxford in 1928 to study physics and chemistry. The final year of her course included CRYSTALLOGRAPHY, a new field of science examining the arrangement of atoms inside certain solids.
Structure of penicillin
Model of a penicillin molecule
As a new graduate Hodgkin became an expert in crystallography. In 1942, she was given a sample of penicillin to analyze. Penicillin could cure bacterial infections, but its structure remained uncertain. Using X-ray crystallography, Hodgkin studied how X-ray beams diffracted, or bent, in different directions around the atoms in penicillin in order to see how the atoms were arranged. She completed the STRUCTURE OF PENICILLIN in 1945.
What came before... In 1822, TreaTise on CrysTallography, a book by French mineralogist RenéJust Haüy, explained that crystals in minerals can have six different geometrical shapes. This formed the basis of crystallography.
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Geometrical shape from Treatise on Crystallography by Haüy
X-rays were discovered by German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895. They proved useful in analyzing crystalline structures, and seeing inside the human body.
