Happy birthday to x-ray #crystallographer Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot, 1910-1994), Nobel laureate in #chemistry for her models of biomolecules like penicillin, vitamin B12 & insulin.
She was “captured for life by chemistry and crystals,” in childhood, 1 of 2 girls allowed to study chemistry rather than domestic science at her school with a small lab in her attic. On her 16th birthday her mother gave her 🧵1/
W.H. Bragg’s ‘Concerning the Nature of Things’ about x-ray crystallography, which used scatter pattern of x-rays through crystals at different angles to image & deduce their structure. She graduated Oxford in chemistry in ‘32.
During her PhD at Cambridge (‘37) she became interested in use of x-ray crystallography to study the structure of proteins & worked with Bernal on the 1st application of the method to image a biomolecule, pepsin. She returned to Oxford in ’34 to teach with her own lab. 🧵2
published as Dorothy Crowfoot.
Her 1954 published vitamin B12 study was described by Nobel Laureate Lawrence Bragg as “breaking the sound barrier.” She published the final structure in 1955 & 56.
One of her most important and celebrated studies was the longest lasting. From 1934-1969 she & team revealed the structure of insulin which contains 788 atoms! This work was instrumental in our ability to mass-produce insulin & create even better drug options.
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Ele Willoughby, PhD