Vote for the most influential woman of the last century
Two of our 175 faces of chemistry appeared on a shortlist for the most influential British woman of the past 100 years, as part of a special series by BBC Radio Four’s Today programme.
This year is the 100th year since the first British women were given the right to vote, and the programme is celebrating with a survey of the most influential women of the past century. Each morning for the past two weeks the programme interviewed two women and asked them each to make a nomination.
Dorothy Hodgkin
Among the woman nominated was Dorothy Hodgkin, the only British woman to have received the Nobel Prize in chemistry. She was nominated by Professor Barbara Sahakian, who is a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge.
"She was a truly outstanding female British scientist who had a series of impressive inventions and discoveries that had impact on society throughout the world", says Barbara.
"Dorothy Hodgkin is best known for development of protein crystallography; for confirming the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12, and in 1969 for determining the structure of insulin. Dorothy Hodgkin was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellowship was named in her honour.
"Since 1999, the Oxford International Women's Festival has presented the Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture, which is a wonderful celebration of a truly outstanding British female scientist."
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin was also nominated, by Kathryn Parsons, tech entrepreneur, and cofounder and CEO of Decoded. Kathryn told the programme: "She is now well-known for contributing to the discovery of DNA, but she was never recognised for that award, sadly, because she passed away at the young age of 37. Her colleagues went on to win one of the Nobel Prizes for that discovery."
The results
The 20 nominees were used to select a shortlist of 12, which included both Dorothy Hodgkin and Rosalind Franklin, and listeners voted for their favourite during the Today programme on Tuesday 6 February.
The eventual winner was Dame Millicent Fawcett, who is primarily known for her work as a suffragist, campaigning for women to have the vote. She also worked to improve women's opportunities for higher education, and was a co-founder of Newnham College, Cambridge.
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