The work of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin on X-ray crystallography

14 May 2001, University of Oxford

This landmark, which recognised the work of Nobel-prize winning X-ray Crystallographer Dorothy Hodgkin, was celebrated with a special lecture by Professor Sir Tom Blundell entitled "Structural Biology and Crystallography today: the influence of Dorothy Hodgkin on current developments". The lecture took place in the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History.

Dorothy Hodgkin elucidated the structures of the antibiotic penicillin and vitamin B12, a treatment for pernicious anaemia, thereby augmenting the synthesis and production of these compounds. Some years later she and her colleagues also discovered the structure of insulin, the hormone responsible for carbohydrate metabolism and employed therapeutically in the management of diabetes