Have you ever looked at a snowflake, an icicle, or a piece of rock candy and thought about how they were made or what the crystals look like up close?
This week’s Wednesday’s Women in STEM Series features a physical chemist who pioneered the use of x-ray crystallography to determine the structures of biological molecules such as insulin, penicillin, and vitamin B-12. Read on to hear how Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin’s interest in crystals earned her the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964.
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was born in Egypt in 1910 and developed an interest in crystals around the age of 10 when a scientist friend of her fathers gave her chemicals and helped her learn about analyzing them. She moved to England for school where she attended Oxford and Cambridge (she even earned the highest entrance exam score of any other woman!). This is where her fascination in crystal chemistry grew and she focused her research career on developing methods to study them.
X-ray crystallography was a new technique that used x-rays to determine the structure of crystals too difficult to see. Dr Crowfoot Hodgkin applied this method to biological molecules and discovered the structure of insulin, penicillin, and vitamin B-12. She was the third women to earn the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 (others being Marie Curie and Irene Joliot-Curie). Her worked helped scientists and doctors better understand how these complex molecules interacted in the body.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
If you are like Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and like like learning about crystals too, check out our Crystal Candy Challenge. You won’t be able to see the molecular structure at home but you can watch as your crystals grow and change over time!
