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Sunday, May 11, 2014

Google Doodle To Celebrate Dorothy Hodgkin's 104th Birthday



Google Doodle: Dorothy Hodgkin's 104th Birthday
Active Date: 12 May 2014
Source: Google Selected Country

About Dorothy Hodgkin:
Dorothy Mary Hodgkin, OM, FRS (12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994), born Crowfoot, was a British biochemist, credited with the development of protein crystallography. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. 

She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three-dimensional structures of biomolecules. Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin that Ernst Boris Chain and Edward Abraham had previously surmised, and then the structure of vitamin B12, for which she became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 

In 1969, after 35 years of work and five years after winning the Nobel Prize, Hodgkin was able to decipher the structure of insulin. X-ray crystallography became a widely used tool and was critical in later determining the structures of many biological molecules where knowledge of structure is critical to an understanding of function. She is regarded as one of the pioneer scientists in the field of X-ray crystallography studies of biomolecules. Hodgkin published as Dorothy Crowfoot until 1949, when she was persuaded by Hans Clarke’s secretary to use her married name on her chapter in The Chemistry of Penicillin. Thereafter she always published as Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. (Wikipedia)



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