The chemist who discovered the structure of insulin and pioneered its progress until today: Who is Dorothy Hodgkin?

Her full name is Dorothy Mary Crowfoot, she was born on May 12, 1910 in Cairo, Egypt, in a distinguished family of archaeologists. She was born the eldest child of her father, John Winter Crowfoot, who worked for the Department of Education, and her mother, Grace Mary Hood. Dorothy has three sisters. Living in Cairo during the winter, Dorothy and her family returned to England each year to avoid the heat during the summer months.

In 1914, her mother left Dorothy and her two younger sisters with their grandparents and returned to live with her husband. Along with their siblings, they had to spend most of their childhood apart from their parents. Dorothy was first encouraged by her mother at the age of 10 to pursue her interest in the crystals on display. In 1923, Dorothy and her sister used a portable mineral analysis kit to study pebbles they found in a stream near their home.

Developing a passion for chemistry from a young age, Dorothy was fostered by her mother, who was a proficient botanist. Later, on her 16th birthday, her mother gifted Dorothy with W.H.Bragg's book "Concerning the Nature of Things" on X-ray crystallography to help her decide on her future. She was also encouraged by Dorothy's family friend, the chemist A.F.Joseph.

In 1921, Dorothy enrolled at Sir John Leman Grammar School in Beccles, England, where she became one of only two girls allowed to study chemistry. At age 14, Dorothy was recommended by D.S. Parsons' "Fundamentals of Biochemistry" by her distant cousin, the chemist Charles Harington.

In 1928, Dorothy Hodgkin enrolled at Somerville College in Oxford and studied chemistry. While she was working at the Jerash archaeological site in present-day Jordan, she spent time finishing the drawings and worked on chemical analyzes of glass tesserae. She graduated with her degree in 1932, becoming the third woman to achieve this distinction. In 1933 Hodgkin was honored with a research fellowship by Somerville College and returned to Oxford the following year.

The hormone insulin was one of Hodgkin's most extraordinary research projects. In 1934, Dorothy was given a small sample of crystalline insulin by Robert Robinson. The hormone excited Dorothy for its complex and far-reaching effects on the body, but at this stage X-ray crystallography was not advanced enough to unravel the complexity of the insulin molecule.

Dorothy, who has been working on the insulin molecule for a long time to prove the structure and take the first photograph, revealed the structure for the first time in 1969 with her team of young and international scientists. Her work was largely pioneering in the mass production of insulin and the treatment of both type one and type two diabetes.

Dorothy, who started teaching chemistry with her own laboratory equipment, was appointed as the first chemistry teacher in 1936 and continued as a teacher until 1977. In the fall of that year, she enrolled for her doctorate at Newnham College, Cambridge. During her studies, she realized that X-ray crystallography had the potential to determine the structure of proteins. Dorothy worked with John Desmond Bernal on the first application of the technique in the analysis of the biological substance pepsin. She earned her PhD in 1937 for her research on X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of sterols.

Hodgkin, especially famous for her discovery of three-dimensional biomolecular structures, published the first such structure of a steroid and cholesteryl iodide in 1945 with C.H.(Harry)Carlisle. In 1945 Hodgkin and other colleagues worked on deciphering the structure of penicillin, showing that, contrary to the scientific view at the time, penicillin contained a β-lactam ring. His work was not published until 1949.

In 1948, Hodgkin was the first to encounter vitamin B12, one of the most structurally complex vitamins known, and was able to create new crystals. It was first discovered by Merck earlier that year, but was of an almost completely unknown nature at the time, and Hodgkin's realization that it contained cobalt could be identified by X-ray crystallography analysis. It posed a previously unexplored challenge in structure analysis, due to the large size of the molecule and the largely unaccounted for atoms other than cobalt. Hodgkin found that these crystals have a ring structure because they are pleochroic, and she confirmed this using X-ray crystallography. In 1955, after the publication of the final build of B12, Hodgkin was awarded the Nobel Prize.

In April 1953, Hodgkin became one of the first people to travel from Oxford to Cambridge to see the model of the double helix structure of DNA built by Francis Crick. Hodgkin, who became a reader at Oxford in 1957, was given a fully modern laboratory the following year. In 1960 Hodgkin was appointed the "Wolfson Research Professor" of the Royal Society academy and remained in that position until 1970.

Personal life

In 1937, Dorothy married Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, son of a historian. The couple had three children, Luke, Elizabeth, and Toby.

Hodgkins, with her soft-spoken, determined, gentle and humble demeanor, was striving to achieve her goals no matter what obstacles came her way. Thanks to her structural studies of biologically important molecules, she made many contributions to the understanding of how they fulfill their functions in living systems and was a pioneer in the development of different subjects. Hodgkin's mentor is Professor John Desmond Bernal, who influenced her life scientifically, politically and personally.

In 1934, Dorothy, who began to feel pain in her hands that caused swelling and deterioration, contracted an infection after the birth of her first child. Later, while visiting a doctor, Dorothy learned that she had been diagnosed with chronic rheumatoid arthritis. After receiving some treatment for her illness, Dorothy later returned to the lab and had a hard time working because of the condition of her hands. Her condition would worsen over time and become crippled, with deformities experiencing pain in both her hands and feet for a while. Hodgkin, who spent a lot of time in a wheelchair in his final years, tried to stay scientifically active in his career.

Hodgkin was known by Hans Clarke's secretary as "Dorothy Crowfoot" until 1949. It was later published as "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin", which became the name used in the Nobel Foundation award and the biography in which she is among other Nobel Laureates.

She died in July 1994 after suffering a stroke at her home in the village of Ilmington. There are 17 portraits of Dorothy in the National Portrait Gallery in London. A portrait of Hodgkin by Bryan Organ was commissioned by private subscription as part of the Royal Society collection. On March 25, 1982, this portrait became the first female Fellow portrait to be included in the collection of the association.