COUNTRY OF BIRTH

Egypt

INDUSTRY

Chemistry

TOP ACHIEVEMENTS

Dorothy Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for confirming the structure of vitamin B12, the third woman to win the prestigious award. She also advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, confirmed the structure of penicillin, and unlocked the structure of insulin.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Dorothy Crowfoot was born in Egypt to British parents who worked for the Ministry of Education. She mostly lived with her grandparents while her parents worked in various foreign locations during World War I. In 1921, Dorothy’s father enrolled her in Sir John Leman Grammar School in England, and she was one of two girls allowed to study chemistry. At the age of 18, she enrolled in Somerville College in Oxford to study chemistry. She graduated four years later with a first-class honors degree, the third woman at the college to achieve this. She completed her Ph.D. at Newnham College in Cambridge, which is where she realized the potential of x-ray crystallography to determine the structure of proteins.

EARLY CAREER

Before she completed her Ph.D., Dorothy received a research fellowship from Somerville College. The college also appointed her as its first fellow and tutor in chemistry two years later, a position she held until 1977. In 1957, Dorothy became a Reader at Oxford and was given her own laboratory the next year. In 1960, she was chosen as the Royal Society’s Wolfson Research Professor, a post she held until 1970.

ACHIEVEMENTS IN CHEMISTRY

Dorothy discovered the first three-dimensional biomolecular structure of cholesteryl iodide, and she also solved the structure of penicillin, along with several colleagues. In addition, Dorothy spent 35 years working on discerning the complexity of the insulin hormone and improving the technique of x-ray crystallography that eventually helped her unlock it in 1969. Her work with insulin paved the way for the hormone to be mass-produced for the treatment of both types of diabetes. The work that earned her the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was her discovery of the structure of vitamin B12. The vitamin had been discovered in early 1948 and its structure was virtually unknown in the field of chemistry. Dorothy realized that the structure actualization could be determined by x-ray crystallography analysis, and she published the final structure in 1958. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1964.

RECOGNITION

In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964, Dorothy Hodgkin was appointed to the Order of Merit and received the Copley Medal, the Lomonosov Medal, and the Lenin Peace Prize for her work toward peace and disarmament. She held many prestigious positions, including Fellow of the Royal Society, EMBO Membership, Chancellor of the University of Bristol, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and more.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

• Dorothy Hodgkin published under her maiden name, Crowfoot, until 1949, when she was persuaded to use her married name, Hodgkin. At that point, she had been married for 12 years and given birth to three children. Today, she is mainly known as Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and Dorothy Hodgkin.
• In the 1940s, Dorothy taught Margaret Roberts, known later as Margaret Thatcher. When Thatcher was prime minister, she hung a portrait of Dorothy her office.
• In 1953, Dorothy was one of the first people to see the model of the double helix structure constructed by Watson and Crick.
• An asteroid discovered in 1982 was named Hodgkin in her honor.