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 Crowfoot and Hodgkin families, parental contributions to the life of the Sudan, Somerville College Oxford, Margery Fry, early x-ray crystallography, J D Bernal
Biochemistry,
vid-019, MSVA_025
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/000157
Hodgkin, Dorothy CrowfootWolstenholme, Gordon
Learning Resources
Original artefact: 1987 RADAR resource: 2017
Oxford, UK
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