Ten fun facts about Dorothy Hodgkin

Fact 1
She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three dimensional structures of biomolecules.

Fact 2
Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin that Ernst Boris Chain and Edward Abraham had previously surmised, and then the structure of vitamin B12, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Fact 3
Apart from the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1964, she was the second woman recipient of the Order of Merit in 1965 (preceded only by Florence Nightingale), the first woman recipient of the Copley Medal, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a winner of the Lenin Peace Prize, and was Chancellor of Bristol University from 1970 to 1988. She was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) from the University of Bath in 1978.

Fact 4
In 1983, Hodgkin received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.

Fact 5
The Royal Society has established the prestigious Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship for early career stage researchers.

Fact 6
In 1969, after 35 years of work and five years after winning the Nobel Prize, Hodgkin was able to decipher the structure of insulin.

Fact 7
X-ray crystallography became a widely used tool and was critical in later determining the structures of many biological molecules where knowledge of structure is critical to an understanding of function.

Fact 8
She is regarded as one of the pioneer scientists in the field of X-ray crystallography studies of biomolecules.

Fact 9
In 1960 she was appointed the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, an honor that provided her salary, research expenses and research assistance to continue her work at Oxford.

Fact 10
Hodgkin's scientific mentor Professor John Desmond Bernal greatly influenced her life both scientifically and politically.

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