Hodgkin, Dorothy

British chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, recipient of the 1964 Nobel Prize in chemistry, for her determinations by x-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances.  

Royal Society The U.K. National Academy of Science, founded in 1660 

The most powerful technique for determining the structure of a chemical compound is x-ray crystallography. In this technique, a beam of x rays is focused on a crystal of a compound. The diffraction pattern produced enables chemists to determine the location of atoms within the crystals and hence deduce the molecular structure. It was Dorothy Hodgkin who pushed the limits of the technique to determine the structures of some biologically important molecules, including penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin. 

Hodgkin enjoyed the sparkling intellectual atmosphere at Cambridge, but financial hardship forced her to take a position as a tutor back at Oxford. It was there that she began her own research career in the lonely basement of the university museum. At that time, women were not permitted to join the chemistry club at Oxford University, so she was in effect barred from sharing in the intellectual life of her colleagues. 

Although Hodgkin had made major contributions to science, she still held the lowly rank of tutor. Deep in debt, she asked a senior professor to help her acquire a better position. With his help, she was appointed university lecturer in 1946. In 1948 she decided to take on the determination of vitamin B12 s structure. This vitamin had been shown to prevent the disease of pernicious anemia but its chemical makeup remained unknown. With ninety-three atoms other than hydrogen, most chemists regarded the task of identifying its structure as impossible. Over the next six years, Hodgkin and her students toiled over the task. Their success in 1956 was the supreme triumph of her career. 

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Hodgkin, Dorothy Crowfoot, 248 Homarus Americanus, 157 Homogeneous Uniform in composition, 2,4-5... 

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease 248 Crick, Francis H. C. 84, 200 Cristae of mitochondria 14 Crossing-over 18 Crosslinking 79 Crotonase. See Enoyl hydratase Crowfoot Hodgkin, Dorothy M. 84 Cruciform structure in nucleic acids 229 Crustacea 24 Cruzain 619 Cryoenzymology 469 elastase 616 Cryoprotectants 191 Crystallins 169 Crystallography 131-137 electron 131 X-ray 132-137 Crystals, liquid 392-394 Crystal systems 133 Cubic symmetry... 

HODGKIN. DOROTHY C. (1910-1994). An Egyptian-born chemist who was recipient of the Nobel prize for chemistry in I9b-I. for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of Important biochemical substances. Her work involved determining the structure of vitamin Bo, cholesterol iodide, and the antibiotic penicillin hy using X-ray crystallographic analysis. She was educated at Oxford and Cambridge. 

Heyrovsky, Jaroslav, portrait. The Library of Congress p. 208 Hodgkin, Dorothy, photograph. Archive Photos, Inc./Express Newspapers. Reproduced by permission p. 216 Chlorine plant in Louisiana, photograph. 

The change in name upon marriage has always been problematic for academic women. Sharon Bertsch McGrayne remarked the change in name even caused confusion in the case of Dorothy Crowfoot (Mrs. Hodgkin) Dorothy published her penicillin studies under her maiden name Crowfoot and announced vitamin B12 as Hodgkin. Years later some scientists still did not know that the Crowfoot of penicillin fame was the Hodgkin of B12 fame. 5... 

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