The Manchester Lit & Phil welcomed Dame Dorothy Hodgkin in 1981, at the Society’s bicentenary and made her an Honorary Member. The enterprising nature of her work earned her the Dalton Medal and she gave the Dalton Lecture.
Dame Dorothy’s lecture was entitled ‘Moments of Discovery’ and touched on the many important, new scientific ideas she had put forward during her life. She discussed in particular the development of x-ray crystallography. Dame Dorothy related these to John Dalton’s work on atoms and the principles behind his own ground-breaking work on molecular structures. This fascinating lecture can still be read in the Society’s Memoirs.
She was born Dorothy Crowfoot in Cairo, Egypt, and was the oldest of four daughters. Her parents worked in North Africa and the middle East in the colonial administration and later as archaeologists. Her parents were John Crowfoot (1873–1959), who worked for the country’s Ministry of Education, and his wife Grace (née Hood) (1877–1957). The family lived in Cairo during the winter months, returning to England each year to avoid the hotter part of the season in Egypt.
Dorothy’s love of science was triggered at a young age while in Egypt and the Sudan, where she spent her early years. Her parents introduced her to subjects ranging from archaeology to botany. Back in England, aged 10, Dorothy attended classes run by the Parents National Educational Union. The science syllabus extended beyond that taught by mainstream schools of the time and included practical work. At her family home in Beccles, Suffolk, she created a personal laboratory in an attic room. She gathered natural history specimens and performed analyses on various things such as garden soil, using a chemistry set given to her by a family friend.
In 1928, Dorothy matriculated at Somerville College, Oxford where she studied chemistry. While a student Dorothy opted for a research project to investigate the crystal structure of dimethyl thallium halides, and this provided the launchpad into a career in crystallography. Dorothy graduated in 1932 with a first-class honours degree and was only the third woman to achieve this distinction.
In the autumn of 1932, she began studying for a PhD at Newnham College, Cambridge, under the supervision of John Desmond Bernal. It was here that she became aware of the potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of proteins. Her PhD was awarded in 1937 for research on X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of sterols. All of this she did while suffering from the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis.
In 1933 Dorothy was awarded a research fellowship by Somerville College, and in 1934, she moved back to Oxford, remaining there for most of her working life. She started teaching chemistry using her own lab equipment. The college appointed her its first fellow and tutor in chemistry in 1936, a post which she held until 1977.
In 1946 Dorothy took part meetings which led to the foundation of the International Union of Crystallography and visited many countries, including China, the USA and Russia. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947, a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences in 1956, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston) in 1958.
In 1965 Dorothy was award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. According to the Nobel Prize Citation it was: “for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances”
In 1937 Dorothy married Thomas Hodgkin, whose main field of interest had been the history and politics of Africa and the Arab world, and who was Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. They had three children and three grandchildren.
Dorothy died in July 1994 after a stroke, at her husband’s home in the village of Ilmington, near Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire.
Paul Diggett, member of Manchester Lit & Phil
Photograph of Dorothy Hodgkin by Godfrey Argent – National Portrait Gallery, London