Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

This master crystallographer’s expert analysis made crystals clear.

Champ of crystallography who advanced HUMAN HEALTHCARE

Did you know? As a child, Hodgkin used a mineral testing kit to investigate stones from a local stream.

Molecular model of vitamin B12

Ilmenite was the first mineral Hodgkin studied as a child.

Crystal course

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 René-

Just Haüy, explained that crystals in minerals can have six different geometrical shapes. This formed the basis of crystallography. X-rays were discovered by German physicist

Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895. They proved useful in analyzing crystalline structures, and seeing inside the human body.

Hodgkin also focused on vitamins – chemicals in food that the body needs to function. Hodgkin’s analysis of the crystal structure of vitamin B12, penicillin and other chemicals won her the Nobel

Prize in Chemistry in 1964. She also studied insulin, the hormone that controls the level of sugar in blood. Following three decades of work, her model for insulin was revealed in 1969, which helped in the TREATMENT OF DIABETES, a disease that causes high levels of sugar in blood.

By the way… For years my hands made models of molecules I examined. English sculptor Henry Moore did several drawings of my hands in 1978.

Honours list

In 1947, Hodgkin was made a Fellow of the

Royal Society, the oldest society for science, and the awards kept coming. In 1965, she became the second woman to win the UK’s prestigious ORDER OF

MERIT. She also received the Lenin Peace Prize and the Copley Medal.

Order of Merit insignia

How she changed the world

Dorothy Hodgkin pioneered X-ray crystallography techniques, completing structures for penicillin, insulin, and various vitamins, which improved global medicine and healthcare.

The first X-ray photograph of diffraction, or bending, caused by crystals was produced by German physicist Max von Laue in 1912. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his work. The first X-ray spectrometer was invented by British physicist

William Henry Bragg in 1913. This could be pointed at a crystal from any angle and also determined a diffracted X-ray’s intensity.