The exceptional life of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin | 91TV
Transcript
- Professor Hodgkin...
- She should be much better known than she is.
- Scientists admire the great determination and skill
- which has always been the mark of your work.
- She was a highly intelligent, highly focused scientist.
- She would keep going, whatever the difficulties.
- You just solve the next small problem
- and eventually the whole problem will crack.
- Involving what can only be described as gifted intuition.
- She was a peace lover. She believed in solving problems
- by dialogue and not by confrontation.
- In recognition of your services to science...
- She's the only British woman scientist ever to have won
- a Nobel prize...
- ...For chemistry.
- What was it about Dorothy that made is possible
- for her to achieve
- the things she did,
- at a time when so few women had those opportunities?
- Dorothy was born in Cairo,
- her father was very interested in archaeology
- as was her mother.
- If there was a dig, archaeological dig, she would try and join in.
- She also had this amazing ability
- for recognising patterns and symmetry,
- and her notebooks show that, from when she was really quite young.
- When World War One broke out,
- Dorothy and her then two sisters
- were brought back to England.
- She was essentially left
- as the head of the family.
- She had to worry about whether there was enough money in the bank account.
- Her interest in chemistry
- started when she was only about the age of 10,
- when she went to a little tiny primary school
- where they grew crystals
- and she said herself, "I was captured for life
- by chemistry and by crystals."
- When Dorothy was in her teens,
- one of the discoverers of x-ray crystallography
- talked about this technique
- that allows you to see where the atoms are in the molecule
- and how they're arranged in space,
- and so she read about being able to see atoms
- and said to herself there and then, "That's what I want to do."
- In lectures she was extremely well-known
- for seemingly having gone to sleep,
- and yet at the end, Dorothy would ask the most piercing question.
- She clearly wasn't asleep.
- What personal qualities have helped you in the work?
- In some ways, I suppose, a certain kind of foolhardiness
- for going on, doing things
- that other people don't expect is quite possible to do.
- I think a lot of girls grow up with a sense
- that they don't have the permission to do things they might want to do.
- One of the characteristics that Dorothy's upbringing gave her
- was a tremendous sense of agency.
- When she got married,
- she was asked to stand down from her fellowship at college.
- Eventually this was changed,
- and she also managed to be awarded maternity leave.
- She was the first woman to have that at the University of Oxford.
- It paved the way for other women
- who wanted to have a fulfilled scientific life
- and also to have a family.
- After Dorothy's first child was born,
- she suffered an attack of acute rheumatoid arthritis
- and left her with distorted hands and feet.
- As she got older, the arthritis did recur
- but she didn't let it hold her back.
- Dorothy was very much engaged in international issues
- and so she was vehemently opposed to the war in Vietnam
- and indeed visited north Vietnam.
- She did travel extensively and she made a point of visiting,
- first of all, the Soviet Union, and subsequently China.
- It was the height of the Cold War, but scientific relations continued
- and she was always very keen to make contact.
- Internationalism was a very big part of her make-up.
- Dorothy remains the only woman scientist
- in this country to win a Nobel prize.
- The determination of the structure of vitamin B12
- has been considered the crowning triumph
- of x-ray crystallographic analysis.
- The Daily Mail ran the headline
- 'Housewife wins Nobel prize'.
- The reaction of newspapers in the 60s
- whenever women achieved anything
- was absolutely appalling.
- Dorothy's influence on modern medicine
- is almost incalculable.
- All the problems that Dorothy chose to work on
- were problems that would contribute
- to a better understanding of the body in health and disease.
- Penicillin. The knowledge of its structure was enormously important
- in the Second World War.
- Its structure was not understood until she solved it.
- It enabled doctors to use materials that had been synthesised
- in a laboratory and apply those to the sick patients.
- The way in which those drugs are made now
- rely a lot on the structure that Dorothy determined.
- She gave the impression
- to those who didn't know her perhaps
- of being a frail old lady, which of course she wasn't.
- There was nothing frail
- about Dorothy's mind, attitude, kindness and so on.
- Dorothy should be remembered for blazing a trail, really,
- for showing that women can be scientists
- and not only be scientists, but be extremely successful scientists.
- She gave to the world the knowledge
- but also the way to do it,
- the determination not to give up.
- If you know and think you can do it, keep working at it.
- And if that's not the definition of exceptional,
- I'm not sure what is.
- Thank you, Doctor Hodgkin.
Celebrating the trailblazing chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin - the only British woman scientist to have won a Nobel prize. This is our latest collaboration with BBC Ideas.
Find out about how Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin's hands have been immortalised in the Royal Society's picture archive: /blog/2021/09/sleight-of-hand/
About the Royal Society
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