Dorothy Hodgkin

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and ideas of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994), awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for revealing the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin and who later determined the structure of insulin. She was one of the pioneers of X-ray crystallography and described by a colleague as ‘a crystallographers’ crystallographer’. She remains the only British woman to have won a Nobel in science, yet rejected the idea that she was a role model for other women, or that her career was held back because she was a woman. She was also the first woman since Florence Nightingale to receive the Order of Merit, and was given the Lenin Peace Prize in recognition of her efforts to bring together scientists from the East and West in pursuit of nuclear disarmament.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Georgina Ferry No other episodes
  Science writer and biographer of Dorothy Hodgkin
• Judith Howard 3 episodes
  Professor of Chemistry at Durham University
• Patricia Fara 17 episodes
  Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge

Reading list

• Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, O.M. 12 May 1910--29 July 1994
  Guy Dodson (Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 2002)
• A Lab of One's Own: Science and Suffrage in World War I
  Patricia Fara (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• Scientists Anonymous: Great Stories of Women in Science
  Patricia Fara (Icon Books, 2007) Google Books →
• Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment
  Patricia Fara (Pimlico, 2004) Google Books →
• Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life
  Georgina Ferry (first published 1998; revised edition Bloomsbury, 2019) Google Books →
• The Collected Works of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
  Dorothy Hodgkin (Indian Academy of Science, 1994) Google Books →
• Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries
  Sharon Bertsch McGrayne (first published 1993; Henry Joseph Press, 2001) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Rosalind Franklin
  
  22 Feb, 2018 570 Biology
• Crystallography
  
  29 Nov, 2012 540 Chemistry
• The Curies
  
  26 Mar, 2015 540 Chemistry
• Penicillin
  
  9 Jun, 2016 610 Medicine and health
• Paul Dirac
  
  5 Mar, 2020 530 Physics
• Hildegard of Bingen
  
  26 Jun, 2014 780 Music
• The Neutron
  
  14 Apr, 2016 530 Physics
• Emmy Noether
  
  24 Jan, 2019 510 Mathematics
• Christine de Pizan
  
  8 Jun, 2017 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
• Julian of Norwich
  
  19 Oct, 2023 270 History of Christianity
• Rutherford
  
  19 Feb, 2004 530 Physics
• Women and Enlightenment Science
  
  4 Nov, 2010 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
• The Microscope
  
  28 Nov, 2013 500 Science
• William and Caroline Herschel
  
  11 Nov, 2021 520 Astronomy
• Maxwell
  
  2 Oct, 2003 530 Physics
• Annie Besant
  
  21 Jun, 2012 320 Political science
• Alan Turing
  
  15 Oct, 2020 510 Mathematics
• Michael Faraday
  
  24 Dec, 2015 530 Physics
• Louis Pasteur
  
  18 May, 2017 610 Medicine and health
• Octavia Hill
  
  7 Apr, 2011 360 Social problems and social services

---

Programme ID: m0008wkk

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008wkk

Auto-category: 540 (Chemistry)