Dorothy Crowfoot-Hodgkin

Crowfoot-Hodgkin, Dorothy (Crowfoot Hodgkin, Dorothy), 1910-1994 (United Kingdom). Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1964.

Born May 12, 1910 in Cairo, Egypt, which at that time was ruled by England. His father, John Winter Crowfoot was a specialist in the field of classical philology and the British archaeologist Egyptian educational services. His wife, Mary Gray Hood, an amateur botanist, who later described the flora of the Sudan, and also became an expert on Coptic textiles.

When the First World War, the parents sent the children to England, to his grandmother on the father in the town of Worthing, a few miles from Brighton, on the shore of the Channel. After the cessation of hostilities in 1918, his mother, Dorothy returned to England and settled with the children in Lincoln, where home-taught their history, science and literature. Over the next three years, his mother shuttled between Britain and the Middle East until it settled in the city Geldstone, East Suffolk, where Crowfoot ancestors lived for centuries.

Until 1928 Crowfoot attended school, John Lehman, located near Beckles. At school she was fascinated by crystals, and this prompted her to study the crystallography and chemistry. At the age of 13, she visited her father in Khartoum and met here a quantitative analysis of some local minerals under the supervision of AF Joseph (AFJoseph), chemist, soil scientist.

In 1926 his father became director of the British School of Archeology in Jerusalem, and after graduation Crowfoot comes to his parents to Palestine. Excavation of the Byzantine churches in Jerash (Jordan), she was fascinated by archeology, but returned to England, began to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. By combining their knowledge in the field of botany and archeology, she decided to apply the lessons from her parents' methods of these sciences to chemical research.

Crowfoot first learned about the X-ray diffraction in crystals from the book "On the Nature of Things", written by William Henry Bragg (Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1915) for pupils. She studied crystallography under the direction X. M. Powell (HMPowel) in Somerville. Summer spent the summer in Heidelberg at the laboratory of Victor Goldschmidt (Victor Goldschmidt, 1853-1933), another specialist in this area

. After graduating from Somerville College in 1932 Crowfoot received a small stipend, . which, together with financial support from the aunt allowed her to work at Cambridge University with the eminent physicist John Desmond Bernal (John Desmond Bernal, . 1901-1971),
. Bernal then engaged in the analysis of steroid molecules. Her collaboration with Bernal led to decisive advances in the first phase of research in the field of X-ray analysis of crystals of globular proteins. This period starts with their success in 1934 when they developed a method for the analysis of single crystals of a protein immersed in mother liquor.

In 1935, Crowfoot returned to Oxford, where she was first a mentor. Received with R. Robinson (Nobel Laureate, 1947) a grant for the purchase of X-ray machine, Crowfoot took up the analysis yodholesterina. For this work, which, according to William H. Bragg, is an example of the use of physical method to identify complex spatial structures in organic chemistry, she in 1937 received a doctorate. Bernal wrote: "Her success made her old Professor Sir Robert Robinson to say that now about the structure of molecules much more can be found on the basis of X-ray analysis, and chemists should mind his own business - a synthesis of the substances'.

Three years after the Second World War, Crowfoot-Hodgkin began to study penicillin and successfully met her in 1949, defining the molecular structure of the antibiotic

. In 1948, she applied the X-ray analysis for the study of vitamin B12, and determine the molecular structure of this complex in the structure of matter in 1956

. In 1956 he became a lecturer at the rate of X-ray crystallography
. In 1958 it moved from the laboratory scattered in different locations of rooms in the University Museum of Natural History - in a modern building constructed to the requirements of the Chemical Sciences.

Crowfoot-Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize in 1964 'for determining by X-ray structures of biologically active substances'.

Then she continued her legacy still in the 1930 study of insulin and in 1972 graduated from the analysis of Zn-insulin. Work on the structure of this complex molecule, which contains nearly 800 atoms (vitamin B12 consists of 90 atoms), has been further complicated by the fact that insulin is crystallized with the formation of several forms. Then, Crowfoot-Hodgkin, The role of vitamin B12 in the body and modifikatsirovala its molecule to change the physiological properties of. She had studied lactoglobulin, pepsin, hemoglobin, vegetable globulins.

Between 1960 and 1977 she held the post of professor-researcher Royal Society of London. From 1977 to 1982 - Member of the Board of Wolfson College, Oxford. Honorary Rector (1970-1988) University of Bristol, and since 1975 - President of the Pugwash movement.

Crowfoot-Hodgkin remained an active member of the laboratory, saying: 'There are a lot of complex crystals, which challenge us'.

Died July 29, 1994 in Shipston on Stoure.