On May 12th, Google dedicated its doodle for Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in order to honour her 104th birthday anniversary. This British biochemist was born on May 12th, 1910 in Cairo from English parents. She spent a major part of her youth in the Middle East and North Africa before attending school in England. She had a typical nineteenth century upbringing and became interested in Chemistry about the age of 10, thanks to her father’s friend in the Sudan. This passion for Chemistry and crystals was increased when she received, on her 16th birthday, a book by William Henry Bragg about using x-rays to analyze crystals.
After achieving a first-class honors degree in Chemistry from Oxford University, she moved to Cambridge University as a PhD student. Three years later, she married Thomas L. Hodgkin and they had three children. In 1964, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her “determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances.”
She was the third woman ever to win the prize in chemistry, after Marie Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie, and also the second woman to receive the “Order of Merit” and the “Copley Model”. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin wasn’t only an outstanding biochemist. Since her youth, she was involved in several peace and humanitarian organizations such as “Science for peace” or “The league of Nations”.
Molecular model of Penicillin by Dorothy Hodgkin, c.1945. Image credit: Science Museum London
In 1994, Hodgkin died after a stroke at her home in Warwickshire. Five years later, an author, Gerogina Ferry, writes the first biography about Hodgkin, called “Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life”. This book is commented by The Times as providing a “Memorable picture of a gentle woman of exceptional talent. A Life, indeed”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph_LtlUnRfk
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