Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

From Freepedia

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, OM , FRS (May 12, 1910 – July 29, 1994) was a British scientist, born Dorothy Mary Crowfoot in Cairo.

Image:Hodgkin stamp.jpg

She pioneered the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine 3D structures of biomolecules. Among her most influential discoveries are the determination of the structure of penicillin, insulin, and vitamin B12 for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Besides her extraordinary scientific abilities, she was unassuming, very communicative, and passionate about social inequalities and peace.

Contents

Timeline of her discoveries

Dorothy determined the three-dimensional structures of the following biomolecules:

The list is not exhaustive, it rather highlights major milestones.

Early years

Dorothy was born in 1910 in Cairo, Egypt, to John Crowfoot, excavator and scholar of classics, and Grace Mary Crowfoot née Hood. For the first four years of her life she lived as an English expatriate in Asia Minor, returning to England only a few month each year. She spend the period of World War I in the UK under the care of relatives and friends, but separated from her parents. After the war, her mother decided to stay home in England and educate her children - a period that Dorothy desribed as the happiest in her life.

In 1921, Dorothy entered the Leman School. She traveled abroad frequently to visit her parents in Cairo and Khartoum. Both her father and her mother had a strong influence on Dorothy with their Puritan ethic of selflessness and service to humanity which reverberated in her later achievements.

Education and research

Image:Old Dorothy Hodgkin from Pugwash site.jpg

Early on Dorothy developed a passion for chemistry, and her mother fostered her interest in science in general. Her excellent early education prepared her well for university. Aged 18, she started studying chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, then one of the Oxford University colleges for women only.

She also studied at Cambridge University under the tutelage of John Desmond Bernal, where she became aware of the potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of proteins.

In 1934, she moved back to Oxford and two years later, in 1936, she became a research fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, a post which she held until 1977. In 1960 she was appointed Wolfson Research Professor at the Royal Society.

Insulin structure

Insulin was one of Dorothy Hodgkin's extraordinary quests. It began in 1934 when she was offered a small sample of crystalline insulin by Robert Robinson. The hormone captured her imagination because of the intricate and wide-ranging effect it has in the body. However, at this stage X-ray crystallography had not been developed far enough to cope with the complexity of the insulin molecule. She and others spent many years improving the technique. Larger and more complex molecules were being tackled (see timeline above) until in 1969 - 35 years later - the structure of insulin was finally resolved. But her quest was not finished then. She cooperated with other laboratories active in insulin research, gave advice, and travelled the world giving talks about insulin and it importance for diabetes. Dorothy considered solving the structure of insulin her greatest scientific achievement.

Private life

Dorothy's scientific mentor J.D. Bernal greatly influenced her life both scientifically and politically. He was a distinguished scientist of great repute in the scientific world, a member of the Communist party, and a faithful supporter of successive Soviet regimes until their invasion of Hungary. She always referred to him as "Sage" and loved and admired him unreservedly; intermittently, they were lovers. The conventional marriages of both Bernal and Dorothy were far from smooth.

In 1937, Dorothy married Thomas Hodgkin who was also a one-time member of the Communist party, as well as a charming, intelligent, energetic and impulsive suitor. She also loved him and always consulted him concerning important problems and decisions. Dorothy bore quietly the many difficulties of these situations. Thomas later had a checkered and varied career as a schoolteacher, worker's educationist, historian and economist. He became an advisor in 1961 to Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana, where he remained for extended periods, often visited by Dorothy.

Social activities

Despite her scientific specialisation and excellence Dorothy Hodgkin was by no means a single-minded and one-sided scientist. She received many honours but was more interested in exchange with other scientists. She often employed her intelligence to think about other people's problems and was concerned about social inequalities and stopping conflict. As a consequence she was President of Pugwash from 1976 to 1988.

Honours

Image:Order of Merit Dorothy Hodgkin.jpg

In 1964 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work in crystallography and in 1976 the Copley Medal from the Royal Society. In 1965 she was appointed to the Order of Merit, filling the vacancy left by Winston Churchill.

References

  • Ferry, Georgina. 1998. Dorothy Hodgkin A Life. Granta Books, London.
  • Dodson, Guy. 2002. Dorothy Mary Hodgkin, OM. Biographical Memoir, The Royal Society, London.
  • Dodson, Guy, Jenny P. Glusker, and David Sayre (eds.). 1981. Structural Studies on Molecules of Biological Interest: A Volume in Honour of Professor Dorothy Hodgkin. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Obituary notices

  • Dodson, Guy (Structure 2: 891-893, 1994)
  • Glusker, Jenny P. (Protein Science 3: 2465-2469, 1994)
  • Glusker, Jenny P., and Margaret J. Adams (Physics Today 48: 80-81, 1995)
  • Johnson, Louise N. (FRS), and David Phillips (Nature Structural Biology 1: 573-576, 1994)
  • Perutz, Max F. (Quarterly Review of Biophysics 27: 333-337, 1994)
  • Nature 371: 20, 1994.

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Dorothy_Crowfoot_Hodgkin.html"


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