40 Facts About Dorothy Hodgkin

Dorothy Hodgkin Mary Crowfoot was born in Cairo, Egypt, 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 Hodgkin's parents were John Winter Crowfoot, working for the country's Ministry of Education, and his wife Grace Mary, known to friends and family as Molly.

In 1914, Dorothy Hodgkin's mother left her and her two younger sisters Joan and Elisabeth with their Crowfoot grandparents near Worthing, and returned to her husband in Egypt.

In 1921 Dorothy Hodgkin's father entered her in the Sir John Leman Grammar School in Beccles, England, where she was one of two girls allowed to study chemistry.

Dorothy Hodgkin spent more than a year finishing the drawings as she started her studies in Oxford, while conducting chemical analyses of glass tesserae from the same site.

Dorothy Hodgkin enjoyed the experience of field archaeology so much that she considered giving up chemistry in favour of archaeology.

Dorothy Hodgkin developed a passion for chemistry from a young age, and her mother, a proficient botanist, fostered her interest in the sciences.

When Dorothy Hodgkin was asked in later life to name her childhood heroes, she named three women: first and foremost, her mother, Molly; the medical missionary Mary Slessor; and Margery Fry, the Principal of Somerville College.

In 1928 at age 18 Dorothy Hodgkin entered Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry.

Dorothy Hodgkin graduated in 1932 with a first-class honours degree, the third woman at this institution to achieve this distinction.

Dorothy Hodgkin was working with Bernal on the technique's first application to the analysis of a biological substance, pepsin.

Dorothy Hodgkin's PhD was awarded in 1937 for research on X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of sterols.

In 1933 Dorothy Hodgkin was awarded a research fellowship by Somerville College, and in 1934, she moved back to Oxford.

Dorothy Hodgkin started teaching chemistry with her own lab equipment.

Dorothy Hodgkin became a reader at Oxford in 1957 and she was given a fully modern laboratory the following year.

In 1960, Dorothy Hodgkin was appointed the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, a position she held until 1970.

Dorothy Hodgkin was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1977 to 1983.

In 1948, Dorothy Hodgkin first encountered vitamin B12, one of the most structurally complex vitamins known, and created new crystals.

The B12 study published by Dorothy Hodgkin was described by Lawrence Bragg as being as significant "as breaking the sound barrier".

The final structure of B12, for which Dorothy Hodgkin was later awarded the Nobel Prize, was published in 1955 and 1956.

Dorothy Hodgkin 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 of diabetes.

Dorothy Hodgkin inspired devotion in her students and colleagues, even the most junior of whom knew her simply as Dorothy.

Dorothy Hodgkin made fundamental contributions to the understanding of how these molecules carry out their tasks in living system.

Dorothy Hodgkin was an open and vocal member of the Communist Party and a faithful supporter of the Soviet regime until its invasion of Hungary in 1956.

Dorothy Hodgkin was a chemist who believed in equal opportunity for women.

Dorothy Hodgkin helped him to make the first X-ray diffraction studies of pepsin and crystalline protein.

In 1934, at the age of 24, Dorothy Hodgkin began experiencing pain in her hands causing them to become swollen and distorted.

Dorothy Hodgkin was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and went to a clinic in Buxton for thermal baths and gold treatments.

Dorothy Hodgkin had to create a lever on her own in order to utilize the switch.

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 the Colonial Office.

Dorothy Hodgkin was an intermittent member of the Communist Party and later wrote several major works on African politics and history, becoming a well-known lecturer at Balliol College in Oxford.

At the age of 73, Dorothy Hodgkin wrote a foreword to the English edition of Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene, published by Robert Maxwell as the work of Elena Ceausescu, wife of Romania's communist dictator.

Dorothy Hodgkin wrote of the author's "outstanding achievements" and "impressive" career.

Dorothy Hodgkin was in Ghana with her husband when they received the news that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Dorothy Hodgkin acquired from her mother, Molly, a concern about social inequalities and a determination to do what she could to prevent armed conflict.

Dorothy Hodgkin became particularly concerned about the threat of nuclear war.

Dorothy Hodgkin stepped down in 1988, the year after the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty imposed "a global ban on short- and long-range nuclear weapons systems, as well as an intrusive verification regime".

Dorothy Hodgkin accepted the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government in 1987 in recognition of her work for peace and disarmament.

Dorothy Hodgkin died in July 1994 after a stroke, at her husband's home in the village of Ilmington, near Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire.

The National Portrait Gallery, London lists 17 portraits of Dorothy Hodgkin including an oil painting of her at her desk by Maggi Hambling and a photograph portrait by David Montgomery.