Professor Dorothy Hodgkin
© National Portrait Gallery
Image © National Portrait Gallery
Education
Read for a degree in Chemistry at Somerville, University of Oxford, before completing her doctorate at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, in 1928.
Research area
Biochemistry, crystallography
Career
- After her doctoral studies at Cambridge, Hodgkin returned to work as a Research Fellow at Somerville.
- She pioneered the use of protein crystallography to map the structures of penicillin, insulin, and vitamin B12, and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. She remains Britain’s only female Nobel Prize winner in science.
- Hodgkin was elected to the Royal Society in 1947, two years after the first woman had been elected.
- She was elected Chancellor of the University of Bristol in 1970.
Further resources
- History of the discovery of penicillin from the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology website
- Biography of Professor Dorothy Hodgkin from Somerville College website
- Guardian article on Professor Dorothy Hodgkin and the International Year of Crystallography (2014)
- Obituary for Professor Dorothy Hodgkin in The Independent