Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM FRS in interview with Max Blythe: Interview 2

In the second of four interviews Nobel laureate Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM FRS (1910-1994) discusses her career in x-ray crystallography from the time of first research studies in Cambridge in 1932 to the point at which she had determined and published the three dimensional structure of penicillin and was turning to interests in vitamin B12 in 1947. She talks first about structural studies of the sterols in JD Bernal's laboratory in Cambridge from 1932-34, then her return to Oxford and work on sterols that preceded wartime studies of penicillin crystals. The technical challenges and collaborative efforts involved in determining the structures of penicillin's sodium, potassium and rubidium salts are then reviewed in depth. The final section of the interview provides an introduction to work on the 3-dimensional structure of vitamin B12, a subject taken up as the central topic of interview III. The interview provides a range of perspectives on penicillin research and life in Oxford in the years of World War II

Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM FRS in interview with Sir Gordon Wolstenholme: Interview 1

In the first of a series of four interviews, Nobel laureate Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM FRS (1910-93) talks of a Suffolk ancestry, early education and the careers of her parents. First she discusses her father's fascination with the Middle East, resulting in educational appointments in Egypt at the beginning of the century, followed by service as an education director in the Sudan, where he assisted the development of western style education, including the pioneering of a first school for girls. Attention then turns to mother's interests in archaeology and later the flora of the Sudan. She then reflects on her own education in Beccles, Suffolk, and at Somerville College Oxford, with special reference to the influence of Margery Fry. There follows reference to a range of influences ensuring a scientific career and interest in crystals, plus a review of the state of x-ray crystallography as she knew it in the early 1930s. The interview concludes with comment on a first appointment at Cambridge and early crystallographic work under the direction of J D Bernal

The structure of thiostrepton

Much of the chemical structure of thiostrepton, a sulphur containing metabolic product of the microorganism Streptomyces azureus, has been determined by X-ray crystallographic techniques