Dorothy Hodgkin

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994), an eminent English chemist, pioneered the application of X-ray crystallography for elucidating the structures of biomolecules, a methodology that proved fundamental to structural biology. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964, she remains the sole British female scientist to have achieved this distinction.

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was an English chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential for structural biology. She received the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and is the only British woman scientist to have been awarded a Nobel Prize.

Her seminal contributions include the definitive confirmation of penicillin's structure, which had been previously hypothesized by Edward Abraham and Ernst Boris Chain, and the elucidation of vitamin B₁₂'s structure, an achievement that led to her becoming the third woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. Furthermore, Hodgkin successfully elucidated the structure of insulin in 1969, culminating 35 years of dedicated research.

Initially, Hodgkin used the name "Dorothy Crowfoot"; she adopted "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin" twelve years subsequent to her marriage to Thomas Lionel Hodgkin. The Royal Society, particularly in reference to its Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship, and Somerville College refer to her as "Dorothy Hodgkin". Conversely, The National Archives of the United Kingdom identify her as "Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin". Her Nobel Prize inscription bears the name 'Crowfoot Hodgkin'.

Early Life

Born in Cairo, Egypt, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot was the eldest of four daughters. Her parents, who later became archaeologists, were involved in colonial administration throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Her father, John Winter Crowfoot (1873–1959), served in the country's Ministry of Education, while her mother was Grace Mary (née Hood) (1877–1957), affectionately known as Molly. The family resided in Cairo during the winter, annually relocating to England to escape the intense Egyptian summer heat.

In 1914, Hodgkin's mother entrusted her (then aged four) and her younger sisters, Joan (two) and Elisabeth (seven months), to their paternal grandparents near Worthing before rejoining her husband in Egypt. The sisters spent a significant portion of their childhood separated from their parents, who nonetheless provided remote support. Her mother fostered Dorothy's early fascination with crystals, which emerged when she was ten years old. By 1923, Dorothy and her sister were analyzing pebbles collected from local streams with a portable mineral analysis kit. Subsequently, their parents relocated to Sudan, where her father oversaw education and archaeology until 1926. The loss of her mother's four brothers in World War I profoundly influenced her, leading her to become a fervent advocate for the nascent League of Nations.

In 1921, Hodgkin's father enrolled her at the Sir John Leman Grammar School in Beccles, England, where she was one of only two female students permitted to study chemistry. At the age of thirteen, she undertook a single extended At fourteen, her distant cousin, chemist Charles Harington (later Sir Charles), recommended D. S. Parsons' Fundamentals of Biochemistry. Following the pre-war custom, her parents continued to live and work abroad for portions of the year, returning to England to spend several months each summer with their children. Upon his retirement from the Sudan Civil Service in 1926, her father assumed the directorship of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, a position he and her mother held until 1935.

In 1928, Hodgkin joined her parents at the archaeological site of Jerash, located in contemporary Jordan, where she meticulously documented mosaic patterns from several 5th–6th century Byzantine-era churches. She dedicated over a year to completing these drawings while simultaneously commencing her studies at Oxford and performing chemical analyses of glass tesserae from the same archaeological context. This meticulous approach to creating precise scale drawings of mosaics foreshadowed her later work in identifying and documenting chemical structures. Hodgkin's profound enjoyment of field archaeology led her to contemplate abandoning chemistry for a career in archaeology. Her archaeological drawings are preserved in the archives of Yale University.

From an early age, Hodgkin cultivated a profound interest in chemistry, a passion significantly nurtured by her mother, an accomplished botanist. On her sixteenth birthday, her mother presented her with W. H. Bragg's book on X-ray crystallography, "Concerning the Nature of Things," a gift that proved instrumental in shaping her future academic and professional path. Further encouragement came from A.F. Joseph, a family friend and chemist who also worked in Sudan.

Hodgkin's state school curriculum lacked Latin, a prerequisite for admission to Oxbridge universities at the time. To overcome this, George Watson, the headmaster of Leman School, provided her with private Latin instruction, which enabled her to successfully pass the University of Oxford entrance examination.

In her later years, when prompted to identify her childhood heroes, Hodgkin cited three women: her mother, Molly, as the primary influence; the medical missionary Mary Slessor; and Margery Fry, who served as the Principal of Somerville College.

Higher Education

In 1928, at the age of 18, Hodgkin matriculated at Somerville College, Oxford, to pursue studies in chemistry. She successfully completed her degree in 1932, earning a first-class honours, a notable achievement as she was only the third woman at the institution to attain this distinction.

That autumn, she commenced her doctoral studies at Newnham College, Cambridge, under the mentorship of John Desmond Bernal. During this period, she recognized the transformative potential of X-ray crystallography for elucidating protein structures. Collaborating with Bernal, she participated in the technique's inaugural application to analyze a biological substance, pepsin. While the pepsin experiment is largely attributed to Hodgkin, she consistently emphasized Bernal's foundational role in capturing the initial photographs and providing crucial insights. Her PhD was conferred in 1937, recognizing her research in X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of sterols.

Career and Discoveries

In 1933, Hodgkin secured a research fellowship from Somerville College, leading to her return to Oxford in 1934. She initiated her chemistry teaching activities, utilizing her personal laboratory equipment. The college subsequently appointed her as its inaugural fellow and tutor in chemistry in 1936, a position she maintained until 1977. Notably, during the 1940s, Margaret Roberts (who later became Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) was one of her students. Thatcher, while in office, displayed a portrait of Hodgkin in her Downing Street office as a gesture of respect for her former instructor, despite Hodgkin's lifelong allegiance to the Labour Party.

In April 1953, Hodgkin, accompanied by Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton, was among the initial individuals to journey from Oxford to Cambridge to view the double helix model of DNA. This groundbreaking model, constructed by Francis Crick and James Watson, drew upon data and techniques developed by Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. According to the late Dr. Beryl Oughton (née Rimmer), the group traveled to Cambridge in two vehicles following Hodgkin's announcement of their impending

Hodgkin attained the position of reader at Oxford in 1955, and a state-of-the-art laboratory was provided for her the subsequent year. In 1960, she was designated the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, a role she occupied until 1970. This professorship furnished her with a salary, research funding, and research assistance, enabling her to sustain her work at the University of Oxford. Subsequently, she served as a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1977 to 1983.

Steroid Structure

Hodgkin gained particular recognition for her pioneering work in elucidating three-dimensional biomolecular structures. In 1945, in collaboration with C.H. (Harry) Carlisle, she published the inaugural steroid structure, cholesteryl iodide, building upon her earlier work with cholesteryls dating back to her doctoral research.

Penicillin Structure

In 1945, Hodgkin and her research team, which included biochemist Barbara Low, successfully determined the structure of penicillin. Their findings controversially revealed the presence of a β-lactam ring, a detail that contradicted prevailing scientific assumptions of the era. This significant work was eventually published in 1949.

Vitamin B₁₂ Structure

In 1948, Hodgkin first encountered vitamin B₁₂, recognized as one of the most structurally intricate vitamins, and successfully crystallized it. Vitamin B₁₂ had been initially discovered at Merck earlier that year. Its structure was largely unknown at the time, but upon Hodgkin's discovery of its cobalt content, she recognized that its molecular configuration could be elucidated through X-ray crystallography. The molecule's substantial size and the fact that most of its constituent atoms remained uncharacterized, apart from cobalt, presented an unprecedented challenge for structural analysis.

From these crystals, she inferred a ring structure due to the pleochroic nature of the crystals, a deduction subsequently corroborated through X-ray crystallography. Lawrence Bragg lauded Hodgkin's published B₁₂ study as a breakthrough comparable to "breaking the sound barrier." Although scientists from Merck had previously crystallized B₁₂, they had only reported the substance's refractive indices. The definitive structure of B₁₂, a discovery that later earned Hodgkin the Nobel Prize, was documented in publications from 1955 and 1956.

The Structure of Insulin

Insulin represented one of Hodgkin's most remarkable research endeavors. Her work commenced in 1934 when Robert Robinson provided her with a small sample of crystalline insulin. The hormone intrigued her due to its complex and pervasive physiological effects. However, at this stage, X-ray crystallography lacked the requisite sophistication to resolve the intricate structure of the insulin molecule. Consequently, she and her colleagues dedicated considerable effort to refining the methodology over many years.

Thirty-five years elapsed from her initial photographic capture of an insulin crystal before X-ray crystallography and computational methods advanced sufficiently to analyze larger, more complex molecules such as insulin. Hodgkin's aspiration to elucidate insulin's structure was deferred until 1969, at which point she collaborated with her international team of junior scientists to successfully determine its configuration. Her research on insulin was pivotal in enabling its large-scale production and widespread therapeutic application for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Subsequently, she engaged in collaborations with other laboratories conducting insulin research, offering expert guidance, and delivering lectures globally on insulin's significance for the future management of diabetes. The resolution of insulin's structure yielded two critical advancements for diabetes treatment: it facilitated the feasibility of mass production and empowered scientists to modify insulin's molecular architecture, thereby developing superior therapeutic agents for future patient care.

Personal Life

Personality

Her structural studies of biologically important molecules established benchmarks for a scientific discipline that was rapidly evolving throughout her career. She contributed significantly to elucidating the functional mechanisms of these molecules within biological systems.

Mentor

Hodgkin's mentor, Professor John Desmond Bernal, profoundly impacted her life across scientific, political, and personal dimensions. Bernal served as a principal scientific advisor to the United Kingdom government throughout the Second World War. He was also an outspoken member of the Communist Party and a steadfast proponent of the Soviet regime until its 1956 invasion of Hungary. As a chemist, he championed equal opportunities for women. In his laboratory, Hodgkin expanded upon his foundational work concerning biological molecules, including sterols. She assisted him in conducting the inaugural X-ray diffraction studies of pepsin and crystalline proteins. Hodgkin consistently addressed him as "Sage." Their relationship predated her acquaintance with Thomas Hodgkin. Both Dorothy's and Bernal's marriages were considered unconventional, both by contemporary standards and those prevalent at the time.

Health

In 1934, at the age of 24, Dorothy developed severe pain, swelling, and distortion in her hands. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, she sought treatment at a Buxton clinic, undergoing thermal baths and gold therapy. Upon returning to the laboratory after treatment, Hodgkin encountered difficulty operating the primary switch of the X-ray apparatus due to her hand condition. Consequently, she devised a custom lever to facilitate its operation. Over time, her condition progressively worsened, leading to debilitating deformities in both her hands and feet, accompanied by chronic pain. Despite extensive reliance on a wheelchair in her later life, Hodgkin maintained an active and productive scientific career.

Marriage and Family

In 1937, Dorothy Crowfoot married Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, the son of a historian, who, following his resignation from the Colonial Office, was instructing adult education classes in the mining and industrial regions of northern England. An occasional member of the Communist Party, he subsequently authored significant works on African politics and history, achieving recognition as a lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford. Exempted from active military service due to poor health, he continued his professional activities throughout World War II, commuting to Oxford on weekends while his wife pursued her research on penicillin. The Hodgkins had three children: Luke (1938–October 2020), Elizabeth (born 1941), and Toby (born 1946). Their eldest son, Luke, became a mathematics instructor at the newly established University of Warwick. Their daughter, Elizabeth, pursued a career as a historian, mirroring her father's profession. Their youngest son, Toby, specialized in botany and agriculture. Thomas Hodgkin spent considerable periods in West Africa, where he actively supported and documented the nascent postcolonial states. He passed away in Greece on March 25, 1982.

Aliases

Hodgkin initially published under her maiden name, "Dorothy Crowfoot," until 1949. At that time, Hans Clarke's secretary convinced her to use her married name for a chapter she authored in The Chemistry of Penicillin. By this point, she had been married for twelve years, had three children, and had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

Subsequently, she adopted "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin" for her publications. This nomenclature was also employed by the Nobel Foundation in her award citation and accompanying biography, as well as by the Science History Institute. For reasons of conciseness, the Royal Society refers to her as "Dorothy Hodgkin" in connection with its sponsorship of the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship, a practice also adopted by Somerville College following the inauguration of annual lectures in her honor.

The National Archives of the United Kingdom identify her as "Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin." Conversely, numerous commemorative plaques at her former workplaces and residences, such as 94 Woodstock Road, Oxford, designate her as "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin." In 2022, the Department of Biochemistry at Oxford renamed its significantly expanded facility the "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building" in her honor.

Contacts with Scientists Abroad

From the 1950s through the 1970s, Hodgkin cultivated and sustained international collaborations with fellow scientists, notably at the Institute of Crystallography in Moscow, with researchers in India, and with the Chinese team investigating insulin structure in Beijing and Shanghai.

Her inaugural Over the subsequent twenty-five years, she made seven additional trips, with her final A notable However, during her presidency of the International Union of Crystallography from 1972 to 1975, she was unsuccessful in convincing Chinese authorities to allow the nation's scientists to join the Union and participate in its conferences.

Hodgkin's involvement with a purported scientist from another "People's Democracy" yielded unfortunate outcomes. At 73, she authored a foreword for the English edition of Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene, a work attributed to Elena Ceaușescu, spouse of Romania's communist dictator, and published by Robert Maxwell. Hodgkin lauded Ceaușescu's "outstanding achievements" and "impressive" career. However, after the 1989 Romanian Revolution led to Ceaușescu's overthrow, it was disclosed that Elena Ceaușescu had neither completed secondary education nor attended university. Her scientific qualifications were a fabrication, and the aforementioned publication was ghostwritten by a team of scientists to secure a fraudulent doctorate for her.

Political Perspectives and Engagements

Due to her political engagements and her husband's affiliation with the Communist Party, Hodgkin faced a prohibition from entering the United States in 1953, with subsequent visits permitted only through a CIA waiver.

In 1961, Thomas assumed an advisory role to Kwame Nkrumah, then President of Ghana, a nation he frequented for prolonged durations until Nkrumah's removal from power in 1966. Hodgkin was present in Ghana with her husband when she received notification of her Nobel Prize conferment.

Inheriting from her mother, Molly, a profound concern for social inequalities and a resolve to avert armed conflict, Dorothy developed a particular apprehension regarding the peril of nuclear warfare. In 1976, she assumed the presidency of the Pugwash Conference, holding the position for a tenure exceeding all predecessors and successors. Her resignation occurred in 1988, the year following the implementation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which established "a global ban on short- and long-range nuclear weapons systems, as well as an intrusive verification regime." In 1987, she accepted the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government, acknowledging her contributions to peace and disarmament.

Health Challenges and Demise

Citing geographical distance, Hodgkin opted not to participate in the 1987 Congress of the International Union of Crystallography held in Australia. Nevertheless, despite her escalating physical frailty, she surprised her intimates by attending the 1993 Congress in Beijing, where she received a universal welcome.

Her demise occurred in July 1994, following a stroke, at her husband's residence in the village of Ilmington, situated near Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire.

Depictions

The National Portrait Gallery in London enumerates 17 portraits of Dorothy Hodgkin, encompassing an oil painting by Maggi Hambling depicting her at her desk and a photographic portrait by David Montgomery.

In 1978, Graham Sutherland produced preliminary sketches for a portrait of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. One such sketch is housed within the collection of the Science History Institute, while another resides at the Royal Society in London. The intended portrait, however, remained incomplete.

A portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin, executed by Bryan Organ, was commissioned through private subscription for inclusion in the Royal Society's collection. Upon its acceptance by the society's president on March 25, 1982, it marked the inaugural portrait of a woman Fellow to be incorporated into the Society's artistic holdings.

Accolades and Recognitions

During Her Lifetime

• By 1945, she had successfully elucidated the three-dimensional atomic arrangement constituting the structure of vitamin B12.
• In 1947, she attained election as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).
• In 1958, she was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• Hodgkin was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, distinguishing her as the sole British woman scientist to receive a Nobel Prize in any of the three scientific disciplines recognized by the award.
• In 1965, she received an appointment to the Order of Merit, becoming the second woman to be bestowed with this honor.
• In 1966, she was recognized as an Iota Sigma Pi National Honorary Member for her substantial contributions.
• In 1970, she acquired EMBO Membership.
• During the 1970s, she was inducted as a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
• In 1976, she became the inaugural woman recipient of the esteemed Copley Medal.
• Hodgkin served as Chancellor of the University of Bristol from 1970 until 1988.
• In 1978, the University of Bath conferred upon her an honorary Degree of Science.
• In 1981, she received the Dalton Medal from the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.
• In 1982, she was awarded the Lomonosov Medal by the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
• In 1987, she accepted the Lenin Peace Prize from the government led by Mikhail Gorbachev.
• In 1983, Hodgkin was awarded the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.
• In 1993, asteroid (5422), discovered on December 23, 1982, by L.G. Karachkina at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (M.P.C. 22509, USSR), was named "Hodgkin" to commemorate her contributions.

Legacy

• The Dorothy Hodgkin Quarter, a student accommodation facility at Somerville College, bears Hodgkin's name.
• Hodgkin was featured on British commemorative stamps on two occasions. In August 1996, she was one of five "Women of Achievement" honored in a special issue, alongside Marea Hartman (sports administrator), Margot Fonteyn (ballerina/choreographer), Elisabeth Frink (sculptor), and Daphne du Maurier (writer). Notably, Hodgkin was the only individual in this group who had not been appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). Subsequently, in 2010, to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, Hodgkin was the sole woman included in a stamp collection celebrating ten of the Society's most distinguished members, appearing alongside figures such as Isaac Newton, Edward Jenner, Joseph Lister, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Babbage, Robert Boyle, Ernest Rutherford, Nicholas Shackleton, and Alfred Russel Wallace.
• The Royal Society established the Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship, named in her honor, which is awarded "for outstanding scientists at an early stage of their research career who require a flexible working pattern due to personal circumstances, such as parenting or caring responsibilities or health-related reasons."
• Several institutions and structures bear her name, including the Council offices in the London Borough of Hackney, buildings at the University of York, Bristol University, and Keele University, and the science block at Sir John Leman High School, her alma mater.
• In 2012, Hodgkin was prominently featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans, which commemorated the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel comprising seven academics, journalists, and historians included her among individuals in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character."
• In 2015, Hodgkin's 1949 publication, The X-ray Crystallographic Investigation of the Structure of Penicillin, received a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented to the University of Oxford, England. This research is particularly significant for its pioneering application of X-ray crystallography in elucidating the structure of complex natural products, specifically penicillin.
• Since 1999, the Oxford International Women's Festival has annually hosted the Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture, typically in March, to honor Hodgkin's scientific contributions. This lecture is a collaborative initiative involving Oxford AWiSE (Association for Women in Science & Engineering), Somerville College, and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Timeline of women in science

• Timeline of women in science

Notes

References

• Media related to Dorothy Hodgkin

• Dorothy Hodgkin, including her Nobel Lecture, "The X-ray Analysis of Complicated Molecules," delivered on December 11, 1964.
• Portraits of Dorothy Hodgkin are held at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
• Works by or about Dorothy Hodgkin.
• Four interviews with Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, conducted between 1987 and 1989 in collaboration with the Royal College of Physicians, are preserved within the Medical Sciences Video Archive in the Special Collections at Oxford Brookes University:
  • Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM FRS in interview with Sir Gordon Wolstenholme: Interview 1 (1987).
  • Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM FRS in interview with Max Blythe: Interview 2 (1988).
  • Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM FRS in interview with Max Blythe: Interview 3 (1989).
  • Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM FRS at home talking with Max Blythe: Interview 4 (1989).
• A lecture by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910–1994) from the 1988 Nobel Laureates Symposium at the annual meeting of the American Crystallographic Association, Philadelphia.
• Dorothy Hodgkin was featured on the BBC Radio 4 program "In Our Time" on October 3, 2019.
• "The exceptional life of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin," a BBC "Ideas" program from September 27, 2021.