Dorothy Hodgkin Timeline

In 1933, Hodgkin was awarded a research fellowship by Somerville College, and in 1934 she moved back to Oxford, beginning her long association with the university's crystallography research.

Hodgkin's decades-long effort to determine the structure of insulin began in 1934, when she was offered a small sample of crystalline insulin by Robert Robinson. Her dream of unlocking its structure would take 35 years to realize.

Image source: Insulin

Hodgkin's PhD was awarded in 1937 for research on X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of sterols, cementing her expertise in the technique that would define her career.

Image source: Doctor of Philosophy

In 1945, working with C.H. Carlisle and others including biochemist Barbara Low, Hodgkin solved the structure of penicillin, demonstrating, contrary to scientific opinion at the time, that it contains a β-lactam ring. The work was not published until 1949.

Image source: Penicillin

In 1948, Hodgkin first encountered vitamin B12, one of the most structurally complex vitamins known, and created new crystals of it. By 1945 she had already succeeded in identifying structures describing the arrangement of atoms in three dimensions; B12 would become her next great triumph.

Image source: Vitamin B12

Hodgkin published as 'Dorothy Crowfoot' until 1949, when she was persuaded by Hans Clarke's secretary to use her married name on a chapter she contributed to The Chemistry of Penicillin.

In April 1953, together with Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton, Hodgkin participated in gatherings following the announcement of the structure of DNA, part of the vibrant scientific community at Oxford.

Image source: Sydney Brenner

The final structure of vitamin B12, for which Hodgkin was later awarded the Nobel Prize, was published in 1955 and 1956, revealing the intricate three-dimensional arrangement of one of nature's most complex molecules.

Hodgkin became a reader at Oxford in 1955 and was given a fully modern laboratory the following year, greatly expanding her research capabilities.

Image source: University of Oxford

In 1960, Hodgkin was appointed the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, a position she held until 1970, providing her with dedicated support for her crystallographic research.

Image source: Royal Society

Hodgkin's dream of unlocking the structure of insulin was finally realized in 1969 when she worked with her team of young, international scientists to uncover the structure for the first time, completing 35 years of work begun in 1934.

During 1972–1975, Hodgkin served as President of the International Union of Crystallography. During this period she was unable to persuade the Chinese authorities to permit the country's scientists to become members of the Union and attend its meetings.

Hodgkin stepped down from her Somerville tutorial post in 1977 and was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1977 to 1983, having held the Somerville fellowship and tutorship in chemistry since 1936.

Image source: Wolfson College, Oxford

Because of Hodgkin's political activities, and her husband's association with the Communist Party, she was banned from entering the US in 1953 and subsequently not allowed to visit the country except by CIA waiver.

Hodgkin's first visit to China was in 1959. Over the next quarter century she travelled there seven more times, the last visit coming a year before her death.

Image source: China

Particularly memorable among her visits was the trip to China in 1971, after the Chinese group themselves independently solved the structure of insulin — later than Hodgkin's team but to a higher resolution.

In 1976, Hodgkin became president of the Pugwash Conference, serving longer than any who preceded or succeeded her in this post. She stepped down in 1988, the year after the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty imposed a global ban on short- and long-range nuclear weapons systems.

Image source: Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

In 1987, Hodgkin accepted the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government under Mikhail Gorbachev in recognition of her work for peace and disarmament. Also that year, due to distance, she decided not to attend the Congress of the International Union of Crystallography in Australia.

Image source: Lenin Peace Prize

Following the overthrow of Ceausescu during the Romanian Revolution of 1989, it was revealed that Elena Ceausescu had neither finished secondary school nor attended university — a scandal connected to Hodgkin, who had been associated with the fraudulent awarding of a doctorate to Ceausescu.

Image source: Elena Ceaușescu

Despite increasing frailty, Hodgkin astounded close friends and family by going to Beijing for the 1993 Congress of the International Union of Crystallography, where she was welcomed by all.

Hodgkin received the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances, making her the third woman to win the prize in Chemistry and the only British woman scientist to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in any of the three sciences it recognizes.

Image source: Nobel Prize in Chemistry

In 1965, Hodgkin was appointed to the Order of Merit, one of Britain's highest honours, recognizing her extraordinary contributions to science.

Image source: Order of Merit

In 1966, Hodgkin was awarded Iota Sigma Pi National Honorary Member status for her significant contribution to chemistry.

Image source: Iota Sigma Pi

Hodgkin served as Chancellor of the University of Bristol from 1970 to 1988, a ceremonial leadership role reflecting her stature in British academia.

Image source: University of Bristol

In 1970, Hodgkin gained EMBO Membership, joining the European Molecular Biology Organization in recognition of her contributions to molecular biology.

Image source: European Molecular Biology Organization

In 1976, Hodgkin became the first woman to receive the prestigious Copley Medal, the Royal Society's oldest and most distinguished award for outstanding achievements in scientific research.

Image source: Copley Medal

In 1978, Graham Sutherland made preliminary sketches for a portrait of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, and she was also given an honorary Degree of Science from the University of Bath.

Image source: Graham Sutherland

Accepted by the president of the society on 25 March 1982, the portrait of Hodgkin was the first portrait of a woman Fellow to be included in the Society's collection. That same year, her husband Thomas Hodgkin died in Greece on 25 March 1982, and she also received the Lomonosov Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

In 1983, Hodgkin received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in recognition of her distinguished scientific career.

Image source: Austrian Decoration for Science and Art

Hodgkin died on 29 July 1994 after a stroke, at her husband's home in the village of Ilmington, near Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, leaving behind a legacy as a pioneer of X-ray crystallography.

Hodgkin was one of five 'Women of Achievement' selected for a set of British commemorative stamps issued in August 1996, two years after her death.

Image source: Royal Mail

Since 1999, the Oxford International Women's Festival has presented the annual Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture, usually in March, in honour of Hodgkin's work.

Image source: Dorothy Hodgkin

During the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society in 2010, Hodgkin was the only woman in a set of stamps celebrating ten of the Society's most illustrious members, alongside Isaac Newton, Edward Jenner, Joseph Lister, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Babbage, Robert Boyle, Ernest Rutherford, Nicholas Shackleton and Alfred Russel Wallace.

In 2012, Hodgkin was featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans, broadcast to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, honouring her among the most significant figures of Elizabeth II's reign.

In 2015, Hodgkin's 1949 paper The X-ray Crystallographic Investigation of the Structure of Penicillin was honoured by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented to the University of Oxford.

Image source: American Chemical Society

In 2022, the Department of Biochemistry in Oxford renamed its much expanded building after Hodgkin, calling it the 'Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building', a lasting tribute to her scientific legacy.

Image source: Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford