Dorothy Hodgkin was born in Cairo; where her archaeologist parents were working.
She was schooled in England and studied chemistry at Oxford; graduating in 1932 with first-class honors.
She was a research fellow at Oxford from 1936 to 1977. During that time, she tutored Margaret Roberts – the future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
In 1964, she won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (the third woman to do so) for pioneering protein crystallography; a technique that uses X-rays to determine the 3D structures of molecules.
Among her most influential discoveries were the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12.
Five years after winning the Nobel Prize, Hodgkin deciphered the structure of insulin. X-ray crystallography is now a vital tool in determining the structures of biological molecules; which is key to understanding how they function.
In 1965, Hodgkin became the second woman (after Florence Nightingale) to receive the Order of Merit. She is also the only woman to receive the Royal Society’s Copley Medal.
