Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin’s Crystalline Chemistry, Part 2

After earning her first-class degree in chemistry from Oxford, Dorothy embarked on an impressive career in the new field of X-ray crystallography. She would ultimately earn many, many accolades for her work.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new Chicken Nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces and they created a brand new one. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.

• 0:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare.

• 1:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for sponsored jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs.

• 1:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Spend less time searching and more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 2:12Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:26Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is part two of our episode on Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. Where we left off in part one, her last name was still Crowfoot. She had just earned a first class degree in chemistry from Oxford. If you have not heard part one, jumping in with this one means you will be missing a lot of the formative experiences in her youth that led to her wanting to study crystals and to becoming part of the field of X-ray crystallography, which was still in its infancy and really shaped her worldview.

• 3:00Holly Frey?

  As we talked about in part one, X-ray crystallography was a field developed in the 19 teens. Max von Lauer, William Henry Bragg and his son, William Lawrence Bragg, all earned Nobel Prizes for their work using X-rays to study crystals. Those prizes were awarded in 1914 and 1915. And William Henry Bragg's Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution that introduced the idea of X-ray crystallography to a more general audience took place in 1923.

• 3:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  These were, of course, not the only people working in the field. The point was that this field was established in the 19 teens and 20s and Dorothy Crowfoot graduated from Oxford in 1932. In such a new field, opportunities for advanced education were kind of limited. This was especially true since some of the universities where she might have pursued graduate work were in Germany, where the Nazi Party was rapidly gaining power. Even though she had traveled in Germany the year before, going to these universities was obviously not an option.

• 4:12Holly Frey?

  Ultimately, Dorothy was accepted to join John Desmond Bernal's lab at Cambridge. Bernal had worked with William Henry Bragg, and the lab at Cambridge was far more advanced and better equipped than what Dorothy had access to at Oxford. In addition to that, Bernal and Dorothy had some similarities in their worldviews. Although Dorothy didn't outwardly align herself with any political party at this point, she was a pacifist, and her beliefs were largely socialist. Bernal was also a peace advocate and a socialist, and he joined the Communist Party in 1923.

• 4:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  He also had a lot of sort of utopian ideals, including advocating free love. Although Dorothy isn't known to have had a romantic relationship with anyone before getting to Cambridge, she similarly believed that people's relationships should be unrestricted. Bernal was part of a whole network of left-wing scientists and was connected to the Cambridge Scientists Anti-War Group, which was founded in 1932. He was also a passionate advocate for social responsibility among scientists. Some of these beliefs and connections did cause some challenges for him at Cambridge. Communism, of course, could be very controversial.

• 5:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  But this also speaks to his reputation as a scientist, since it does not seem like it actually affected his role at the university.

• 5:42Holly Frey?

  When Dorothy joined the lab, Bernal was using x-ray crystallography to try to study biological molecules. The molecules he was studying don't typically form crystals in the body, but they can be crystallized in a lab setting and then studied that way. This had the potential to bring about new insights into how these molecules worked in the body and how the body functioned. Dorothy had not really intended to pursue a PhD at Cambridge, but most of the people she worked with thought that she should, so she did eventually start working toward that end.

• 6:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, at first she was mostly thinking to get some additional education, but not go all the way to a PhD with it. In 1933, Dorothy had a brief relationship with Conrad Hal Waddington, who was known as Wad, who was married but separated. This relationship doesn't seem to have lasted very long, but Wad is often characterized as Dorothy's first love. She also had a relationship with Bernal, who was married as well, and who also had relationships with other women in addition to Dorothy.

• 6:51Holly Frey?

  In 1934, Dorothy's family convinced her to see a doctor about persistent pain in her hands. And she went to London to do this. While she was gone, Bernal photographed his first X-ray of crystallized pepsin, which is a digestive enzyme. Bernal had been working on this for a while. And while Dorothy was away, he had discovered that keeping the crystals wet allowed them to produce a diffraction pattern. If the crystals were allowed to dry out, which had been the standard procedure before this, they just produced a smudgy, dark mess.

• 7:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Dorothy got back to Cambridge with orders from the doctor to rest for a month. Not helpful advice, really, for her. But when she saw what Bernal had accomplished, she immediately got to work. Their results were published in the journal Nature as X-ray photographs of crystalline pepsin in May of 1934, under both of their names. At the time, all enzymes were believed to be proteins, and this moment is marked as the beginning of protein crystalography.

• 7:58Holly Frey?

  This was a groundbreaking and exciting discovery. Other researchers had also been trying to analyze proteins, only to wind up with vaguely black diffraction patterns that didn't yield any information. Bernal's realization that a pattern emerged if the crystal was exposed while wet in its mother liquid suggested other protein molecules could also be studied if they were treated similarly. When Dorothy embarked on her PhD research at Cambridge, she focused on sterols, steroid alcohols that are found in both plants and animals and include cholesterol and are much larger and more complicated than what she had studied at Oxford.

• 8:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Understandably, at this point Dorothy was talking about Cambridge as a place she never wanted to leave. She was doing groundbreaking work in an atmosphere that both challenged and encouraged what she was doing, and she was among like-minded people a lot of the time. But not long after, starting at Cambridge, she was offered a research fellowship at Oxford. This would not only take her away from the equipment and the colleagues that she had at Cambridge, but it would also give her teaching responsibilities, which would take time away from the research.

• 9:15Holly Frey?

  But at the same time, that fellowship was a paid position and something that had the potential to turn into a permanent role. We haven't really talked about it before this point, but paying for her education had required help from her extended family. It was not something that was easy for them to afford. So the opportunity to earn an income was not something that she could just pass up without really considering it. In terms of her research, this fellowship could also allow her to pursue whatever projects she wanted, seeing them through from beginning to end, which was not the case while working in someone else's lab. But her reluctance to leave Cambridge was also something she

• 9:57Holly Frey?

  did not try to hide from the governing body at Oxford.

• 10:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Eventually Oxford offered Dorothy a two-year fellowship at Somerville College, but one that would be more focused on research and would have the first year taking place at Cambridge. She returned to Oxford in September of 1934.

• 10:17Holly Frey?

  Before leaving Cambridge, Dorothy supported anti-war causes and anti-militarization campaigns, including signing a letter published in the Cambridge Review that protested the militarization of scientific research. For the most part, she supported the work of other activists who were doing most of the on-the-ground organizing and demonstrating. Her main focus was the lab.

• 10:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Dorothy published her first paper as the sole author on April 13, 1935, when she was 24. It was titled "X-Ray Single-Crystal Photographs of Insulin," and it was published in the journal Nature. This work involved figuring out how to produce insulin crystals that were large enough to show a structure when they were x-rayed and photographed. This was the beginning of her decades-long effort to figure out the structure of insulin.

• 11:12Holly Frey?

  Dorothy Croft was awarded a PhD from Cambridge in 1937. Her dissertation was titled "X-Ray Cristalography and the Chemistry of the Steroids." This was also the start of her work on the structure of cholesterol, which would continue into the 1940s.

• 11:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Also in 1937, same year that she got her PhD, she met Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, who was one of Marjorie Fry's cousins. Dorothy was staying with Marjorie in London, where she had been invited to use the crystallography equipment at the Royal Institution. Thomas was also staying with Marjorie for reasons that require us to get into his backstory.

• 11:54Holly Frey?

  Thomas Lionel Hodgkin was born in 1910. He had attended Baleal College, Oxford, at the same time that Dorothy had been a student at Somerville College, although their paths never crossed. Like Dorothy's father, Thomas had joined the British Civil Service, where he worked in the British administrative territory known as mandatory Palestine. When he and Dorothy met, he had recently resigned from his job after increasingly coming to support Arab rights in Palestine and to oppose British imperialism. Thomas opposed political Zionism and Britain's suppression of Arab uprisings against both the British administration

• 12:36Holly Frey?

  and the influx of Jewish immigrants from Europe into Palestine. He had also become a communist. All of this was straightforwardly incompatible with his work as a British colonial administrator. And after he resigned, he was deported to Lebanon.

• 12:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  When Thomas and Dorothy met, he didn't have a job and he was trying to figure out what to do with himself. He was studying to become a schoolteacher, which seemed like one of the only paths that might be open to him at that point. But it wasn't really what he wanted to do, and he did not think he would be very good at it. But he and Dorothy had a lot in common. They were both very bright with similar ideas on things like human rights and pacifism. Thomas was a Quaker, and while Dorothy never formally joined the Religious Society of Friends, she agreed with a lot of their beliefs.

• 13:28Holly Frey?

  Thomas and Dorothy got married on December 16th, 1937, after knowing one another only a few months and meeting in person only a few times. By the time they got married, Thomas had found a teaching position he felt a lot more called to, working in adult education in mining and industrial communities in the north of England. So after they got back from their honeymoon, they lived separately and they saw each other only on weekends and holidays, but they also wrote letters to each other almost every day. Dorothy also continued to publish under the name Dorothy Crowfoot, not adding Hodgkin until 1949.

• 14:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Within a few months of their marriage, Dorothy also became pregnant. This was completely new territory for Somerville College and all the other Oxford women's colleges. It wasn't even common for women fellows to be married, and this was the first time anyone at Oxford had given birth during a fellowship. So Dorothy became the first person at Oxford to be given a paid maternity leave.

• 14:32Holly Frey?

  She felt a little weird about this, as though she was being paid to do nothing, which kind of cracks me up, given how much work a new baby is. But the university seems to have realized that if they did not set a precedent for offering maternity leave, the women scholars might feel like they could not accept fellowships there, because if they did, giving birth might derail their career. The UK established its first paid maternity leave law almost 40 years later in 1975.

• 15:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  And of course, the United States established its first paid maternity leave law, never.

• 15:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Dorothy and Thomas's first child, a son named Luke, was born in December of 1938. The family had nurses and cooks to help look after Luke and then later on, his younger siblings as well. That was while, of course, Dorothy and Thomas worked in different parts of England or different parts of the world. This amount of help might sound like a luxury, but it was necessary for both of them to be able to work in the work that they wanted to do. And money was always really tight for the family. Affording this level of help was a struggle a lot of the time.

• 15:43Holly Frey?

  We're going to talk more about Dorothy's career after we pause for a sponsor break.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 15:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  It was good arrival, anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 16:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager, Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 16:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 16:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 16:48Speaker 06

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 16:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors.

• 17:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown-Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:57Speaker 07

  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating U.S. restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.

• 18:40Speaker 07

  This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.

• 18:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays returned for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast, from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discuss. The Silver Linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only

• 19:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 19:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the months after Dorothy's son Luke was born, she developed an abscess in her breast. This infection seems to have triggered a flare up in the pain in her hands that she had seen a doctor for back in 1934. As this was happening in January of 1939, Thomas fell asleep at the wheel and had a car crash. He had narcolepsy, and that was something that was very poorly understood at the time. He recovered, but he also had to be hospitalized.

• 20:28Holly Frey?

  Dorothy was eventually diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which would affect her for the rest of her life. She experienced pain and stiffness and swelling and deteriorating joints that led her fingers to become misshapen. And this also caused her to have difficulty with day-to-day tasks like getting dressed. She also had to make some adjustments in the lab to make her equipment accessible to her, like adding long levers to switches so that she could control the equipment. We're not going to repeat this over and over for the rest of the episode, but this was ongoing, and at multiple points, she had flare-ups in which her symptoms rapidly worsened.

• 21:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  When Dorothy returned to work after her maternity leave, her main focus was initially working on the structure of insulin. She gave birth to a second child, Elizabeth, in 1941. By that point, World War II was underway, and after her daughter was born, the focus of Dorothy's work shifted to the structure of penicillin.

• 21:30Holly Frey?

  We have covered the history of penicillin on the show before. Alexander Fleming discovered a mold that had antibacterial properties by accident in 1928 and then published on it in 1929. Initial efforts to turn this mold into a medicine were unsuccessful. Then scientists at Oxford University, including pathology professor Howard Florrie and biochemist Ernst Chain, started working with Fleming's mold in 1939. When Dorothy heard about the work with penicillin, she described herself as, quote, "irresistibly drawn to inject myself into the situation."

• 22:11Holly Frey?

  Not long after their first successful tests in mice in 1940, Chain challenged her to work out the structure of the penicillin molecule, saying, quote, "Someday we will have crystals for you."

• 22:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  The war made this a high priority project since figuring out the structure of penicillin could allow researchers to synthesize it and to find other similar molecules with antibiotic properties. It also gave Dorothy access to equipment that she wouldn't have had otherwise. John Desmond Bernal had moved from Cambridge to a lab at Birkbeck University of London. During the war, he was assigned to work with the Research and Experimental Department of the Ministry of Home Security, which a lot of people thought was a little surprising considering his politics. His lab equipment was moved to Oxford, both because it would not have been used otherwise

• 23:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  and because in London it was at risk of being damaged in bombings. Two of his research assistants at the university also went to work with Dorothy.

• 23:14Holly Frey?

  The first production of crystallized penicillin salt was in 1943. But Dorothy didn't receive crystals that were really suitable for this kind of study until 1944, when samples were sent from the United States. Before that, she and other chemists were able to break penicillin down into smaller compounds and analyze those. Eventually, the core of a penicillin molecule was known to contain 27 atoms, including 11 hydrogen, 9 carbon, 4 oxygen, 2 nitrogen, and 1 sulfur.

• 23:50Holly Frey?

  But these atoms could be arranged in very different ways, and chemists disagreed on which configuration was more likely.

• 23:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Dorothy's work on this required her and her team to work in three dimensions rather than working as a flat projection. They had to go layer by layer to create the full structure of the molecule. She was finally confident that the structure she had found was correct on May 8, 1945, which was Victory in Europe Day. She described carrying her physical model of the molecule through a crowd of people celebrating the end of the war so that she could show it to Ernst Chain. I think it was made of like, sticks and corks.

• 24:31Holly Frey?

  Alexander Fleming, Ernst Chain, and Howard Florey were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work with penicillin in 1945. That same year, a conference was held to recognize the 50th anniversary of the discovery of X-rays. Dorothy's work on the X-ray crystallography of penicillin seemed like a logical and important topic to cover at this conference. But it was decided that only work that was carried out before 1944 would be publicly announced.

• 25:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Dorothy's colleague Kathleen Lonsdale, who was also a crystallographer, wrote a letter to Jean Brunel that described Dorothy as, quote, "as angry as her gentle nature will allow her to be over this decision." It wasn't just that her accomplishment wasn't going to be included at this conference. She also thought keeping it a secret would hinder scientific progress. And there was no reason for the secrecy now that the war was over. The pharmaceutical companies that were producing penicillin also wanted her work to be protected as a trade secret. So her crystallographic work on penicillin was not published until 1949.

• 25:47Holly Frey?

  Overlapping with Dorothy's wartime penicillin work, in 1943, Margaret Roberts entered the chemistry program at Somerville College, Oxford. She would later become Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990, and Dorothy was one of her teachers. These two women were extremely different politically, but Thatcher had a picture of Dorothy at the Prime Minister's residence at Downing Street, and Dorothy also spoke directly to Margaret Thatcher on a number of topics that were important to her during her time as Prime Minister, including improving relations with the Soviet Union and chemical weapons test bans.

• 26:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  To return to the 1940s, in 1945, Thomas was appointed Secretary to the university's delegacy for Extramural Studies at Oxford. That was an adult education program. So for a while, the family was all together and living near Oxford. But Thomas eventually left this position to travel to Africa and help set up adult education programs in what's now Ghana, Nigeria, and Sudan, and also to work with anticolonial and independence movements in these places. While in Africa, he also started writing books about African history and African nationalism.

• 27:08Holly Frey?

  Thomas and Dorothy's third child, Toby, was born in 1946. Dorothy became a Fellow of the Royal Society the following year, which was two years after Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjorie Stevenson became the first two women to become Fellows of the Royal Society.

• 27:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1948, Dorothy was part of the establishment of the International Union of Cristalography, and one of the things that she was really insistent about was that it needed to be a truly international organization. That meant that regardless of the growing Cold War, this organization needed to include cristalographers from the Soviet Union and nations allied with the Soviets, including scientists who were Communist Party members.

• 27:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was another theme in her life and her career. Science was science regardless of where a scientist lived. And scientists should be allowed to communicate and collaborate with one another, regardless of the political differences among them or among their home nations.

• 28:10Holly Frey?

  Also in 1948, Lester Smith, the pharmaceutical company Glaxo, sent Dorothy samples of what was being called antipernicious anemia factor to analyze. We have talked in other episodes about how research into vitamins has often focused on the conditions those substances prevented, like vitamin C, which prevents scurvy, being called anti-scorbutic factor. Antipernicious anemia factor is now known as vitamin B12. Today, pernicious anemia is understood as an autoimmune disorder that keeps the body from absorbing vitamin B12 correctly.

• 28:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  By this point, people had started developing computers that could help with the laborious calculations involved in X-ray crystallography. There were some computers in the UK, including the Pilot ACE computer that was originally developed by Alan Turing, which Dorothy used to process some of her data. But she also got an offer to have some of her calculations done in the United States at a computer at the National Bureau of Standards. Taking advantage of this offer required sending data across the Atlantic Ocean through the mail or by telegraph.

• 29:26Holly Frey?

  Dorothy worked on the structure of vitamin B12 for years. She also traveled a lot, including to the United States to meet with researchers there and to Africa to visit her husband. In 1953, she planned to visit the US to meet with Linus Pauling about protein research. But that year, the State Department ruled her statutorily inadmissible to the United States.

• 29:51Holly Frey?

  This probably involved an assortment of factors, including her connections to known communists, including her husband and John Bernal, and her participation in organizations like Science for Peace. A number of people advocated for her to be allowed into the US, and she got a waiver in 1957. But for decades after this, anytime she wanted to go to the United States, first she had to go to the US Embassy in London and have her waiver renewed.

• 30:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Since she had been barred from entering the United States in 1953, she decided to go on a different trip, which was to go to Russia with John Bernal. We said earlier that Dorothy could be overly optimistic or naive, and this definitely seems to be true when it came to her perceptions of the Soviet Union and her experiences there. She was by far not the only person to find the Soviet Union's professed ideals of equality and egalitarianism appealing. That has come up in a number of previous episodes of the show. But she also heard about atrocities that had been or were being carried out under Joseph Stalin,

• 31:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  such as the famine known as the Holodomor that we covered on the show in 2022. She also heard about things like scientists and academics being abducted or disappearing. But she seemed to have trouble believing a lot of this. She also heard about it, a lot of it, from sources in the United States and US allies. The United States had barred her from entry. She was reluctant to believe news from a country that would not permit her to enter. And as was the case for other visitors to the Soviet Union, her visit in 1953 was very tightly controlled, so there were limits to what she actually saw.

• 31:42Holly Frey?

  Dorothy published her work on the structure of vitamin B12 in 1955, after eight years of work, with additional work happening after that. This was a larger, more complex molecule than penicillin with 181 atoms. That year, she was promoted to reader at Oxford, which is roughly comparable to a professor in the United States. She also advocated for pay equity for the women in her lab. She always maintained that she had not faced barriers based on her gender, but when she heard that women were being paid differently, depending on whether they were married, she refused to let that stand. This was one of many efforts to advocate for women students

• 32:25Holly Frey?

  and researchers during her career.

• 32:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  We'll get to the later part of her career after a sponsor break.

• 32:35Speaker 07

  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself. This new chicken nugget,

• 33:19Speaker 07

  reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.

• 33:31Holly Frey?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesse have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them.

• 33:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Along the way, and as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 34:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for sponsored jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed to help solve hiring challenges and

• 35:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Live Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's

• 36:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.

• 36:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1957, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and her children moved in with her sister Joan, who had gotten a divorce and also had children of her own. They formed a household of three adults and eight children, although Thomas was still frequently away. Joan was in charge of managing the household, which became home to just a continual stream of guests. There were scientists, African independence activists, poets, writers, all of the teenage friends of all of these children. It sounds like a very busy, bustling place.

• 36:51Holly Frey?

  People probably thought it was a commune at some point. Dorothy continued to both research and travel. She was willing to go anywhere there were crystallographers she could encourage or learn from. That included being part of a delegation of British academics who visited China in 1959.

• 37:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1960, Dorothy was named to the Royal Society Wolfson Professorship, which was an endowed professorship that brought more funding and more academic status than she'd had previously. The following year, her husband Thomas was appointed Director of the Institute for African Studies in Accra, Ghana by President Kwame Nkrumah. Dorothy saw Thomas for a month or two at a time between then and 1966, when Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup. Fortunately, Thomas was not in Ghana when that happened. His life definitely would have been at risk.

• 37:50Holly Frey?

  In 1964, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances. This made her the third woman to earn a Chemistry Nobel after Marie Curie and Edouard Jolyot Curie, and the only British woman ever to earn a Nobel Prize in Science. Thomas was still working in Ghana then, and she was there visiting him. She learned about the award from two reporters from the Ghana Times who came to interview her about it. Her telegram informing her of the award and many, many telegrams and letters congratulating her had all gone to her home in England, where they were forwarded to her through the mail

• 38:35Holly Frey?

  by a niece who had been raised to be frugal.

• 38:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  I love this story so much.

• 38:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  No one thought to say, if I win the Nobel Prize, send a telegram immediately.

• 38:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Her Nobel Award ceremony took place on December 10, 1964. Dorothy and Thomas traveled to Sweden from Ghana. Their daughter Elizabeth came from Zambia, where she was working as a teacher. Their son Toby came from India. Their other son Luke and his family were in Algeria, where Luke was teaching at a university, and they were unable to attend. They had become a very global family.

• 39:17Holly Frey?

  Dorothy was awarded the Order of Merit in 1965, making her the second woman so awarded after Florence Nightingale. Combined with her Nobel Prize, this made her a public figure. She used some of her Nobel Prize money to support the students and staff who had worked with her at Oxford. And she used the public recognition she developed to advocate against war and imperialism and for nuclear disarmament. These ideas had always been important to her, but before this, her research had always taken priority. It really seemed like, as she became a lot more famous, she really felt a duty to use that fame to advance social and political causes.

• 40:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  But at the same time, she was usually really non-confrontational in her advocacy. She had always believed that constructive dialogue was the key to resolving disputes, going back to attending the League of Nations General Assembly when she was a teenager. She tried to advocate for scientists whose work was being suppressed by talking directly, but respectfully, to government leaders and other officials in those countries.

• 40:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  She was willing to go anywhere and work with anyone who was trying to break new ground in science regardless of that country's relationship with the UK.

• 40:36Holly Frey?

  This increasing dedication to advocacy and the travel schedule brought on by her Nobel Prize meant she was spending less time in the lab. When she was there, her primary focus was back on figuring out the structure of insulin. Insulin is a very large, complex molecule containing 788 atoms, and the math just was not something she could do by hand when she first photographed an insulin crystal in 1935. In the 1960s, developments in computers made this math more possible. Her team of researchers from around the world solved the structure of insulin in 1969, 34 years after she took that first picture.

• 41:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Dorothy always made it clear that she did not do this by herself, and she also regularly credited J.D. Bernal with the discoveries that had made her later work with protein crystallography possible. But many of the researchers who worked on the structure of insulin with her said that she was really the key to this whole effort. She tied everyone's work together, she made critical insights, and asked really probing questions that kept the work going.

• 41:51Holly Frey?

  In 1970, Dorothy was named Chancellor of the University of Bristol, a position she held until 1988. This was generally considered to be an honorary position, but she used it to advocate for funding for the university, and she met directly with students to hear about their concerns and to try to resolve them. In 1982, government funding cuts threatened to close the university's Department of Architecture, and while Dorothy was outvoted in trying to save it, she became part of the establishment of the Bristol Center of Advanced Architecture to help take its place.

• 42:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Over the 1970s and 80s, she continued to do a lot of travel. A lot of it was focused on her peace activism. She also made a point of traveling to visit, work with, and advocate for scientists in developing countries and countries that were considered to be enemies, or at least unfriendly to the UK. That included multiple trips to the Soviet Union and to Communist China and North Vietnam. She was deeply and vocally opposed to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War and served as president of the Medical Aid Committee for Vietnam and a member of a Commission of Inquiry into US war crimes in Vietnam.

• 43:10Holly Frey?

  Dorothy was often accompanied by a family member when she traveled, often her daughter or one of her older grandchildren, because of the assistance that she needed day to day and the many ways that the world could be inaccessible to her. Rheumatoid arthritis was progressively disabling for her, and eventually she started using a wheelchair.

• 43:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1972, Dorothy became president of the International Union of Crystalography. One of her projects as president was to negotiate for China's readmission into the Union. This didn't actually work out during her time in office. China would not be part of any organization that recognized Taiwan as an independent country, which the Union did. China was readmitted to the Union in 1978 after the death of Mao Zedong.

• 43:59Holly Frey?

  From 1975 to 1988, Dorothy also served as president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. This organization was established after World War II, inspired by a manifesto sent from Bertrand Russell to Albert Einstein. Einstein signed this manifesto shortly before his death, and others also signed it, but it has become known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. The manifesto called for scientists to, quote, "assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction and to discuss a resolution." Those perils, of course, included the threat of nuclear war.

• 44:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1976, Dorothy was awarded the Royal Society's Copley Medal, which is its highest honor. She was the first woman to be so awarded. She retired from the Wolfson professorship the following year, having spent a lot of her last years in that role, just setting everything up to continue on without her.

• 45:04Holly Frey?

  Thomas Hodgkin died in Greece in March of 1982, while he and Dorothy were on the way home from a trip to Sudan. In addition to having narcolepsy, Thomas was a lifelong smoker, and he had developed severe emphysema. His cause of death was heart failure. Dorothy had him buried in the churchyard of the village in Greece where they had been staying.

• 45:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Their marriage had been one of lengthy separations for almost its whole existence. Thomas had also had relationships with other people, which Dorothy knew about. I wrote the word affairs in this outline, but I kind of think it's the wrong word. It doesn't feel like either of them thought these relationships were a breach of trust. One of those relationships, though, was serious, and it was with somebody that he had been engaged to before he ever met Dorothy. She was really devastated after his death, though. She lost weight, the symptoms of her rheumatoid arthritis got worse. Her colleague Guy Dodson worried that she might be seriously ill, and he tried to ask her if something was wrong,

• 46:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  and her answer was, "No, Guy, it's just grief."

• 46:14Holly Frey?

  Dorothy tried to keep herself busy with a lot of travel and conferences. In 1987, the Soviet Union awarded her the Lenin Peace Prize. In 1988, she published her last paper on insulin at the age of 78. After that, she retired from public life, primarily because of the pain and progressive disability involved with having rheumatoid arthritis. In 1990, Dorothy fell at home and broke a hip, and after that, she needed 24-hour assistance.

• 46:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  After the fall of the Soviet Union, restrictions were lifted on her entry into the United States. She still did travel when she could, including to the 1990 International Union of Crystalography Conference in Bordeaux, France. In 1993, apparently inspired by a TV program that was critical of China, she decided she wanted to attend the International Congress of Crystalography, held in Beijing. Everyone was really worried about this trip and her doctor refused to certify her as fit for travel, but she went anyway in the company of her daughter Elizabeth.

• 47:22Holly Frey?

  In 1994, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin fell and broke a hip again. She went to the hospital and her family ultimately decided to bring her home. She died there a couple of weeks later on July 29th, 1994, at the age of 84.

• 47:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Molecular biologist and crystallographer Max Perutz, who had been Dorothy's friend and colleague for about 40 years, delivered a eulogy. I'm going to read part of it as I try not to fall apart. Quote, "She pursued her crystallographic studies, not for the sake of honors, but because this was what she'd like to do. There was a magic about her person. She had no enemies, not even among those whose scientific theories she demonstrated or whose political views she opposed. Just as her x-ray cameras bared the intrinsic beauty beneath the rough surface of things, so the warmth and gentleness of her approach to people uncovered in everyone, even the

• 48:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  most hardened scientific crook, some hidden kernel of goodness. She was once asked in a BBC radio interview whether she felt handicapped in her career by being a woman. As a matter of fact, she replied ingenuously, "Men were always particularly nice and helpful to me because I was a woman." At scientific meetings, she would seem lost in a dream until she suddenly came out with some penetrating remark, usually made in a diffident tone of voice and followed by a little laugh, as if wanting to excuse herself for having put everyone else to shame."

• 48:58Holly Frey?

  As a side note, Max Perutz and John C. Kendrew were awarded a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of hemoglobin in 1962, two years before Dorothy got her Nobel Prize. Perutz said of that, quote, "I felt embarrassed when I was awarded the Nobel Prize before Dorothy, whose great discoveries had been made with such fantastic skill and chemical insight and had preceded my own."

• 49:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to her groundbreaking work on the structure of things like penicillin, insulin, and vitamin B12, over her career, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin had encouraged and mentored students from around the world. Former students established crystallography labs in multiple countries, including China, India, and New Zealand. One of her former students, M. Vijayan, wrote an obituary in which he described her as a mother with a vast international family of colleagues and scientists and friends, noting that of the more than 100 scientists who worked in her laboratories, only 25 came from the UK. Others came from

• 50:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  a number of places, some of the countries I'm about to say don't exist anymore. This is his list from when he wrote her obituary. Australia, India, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Chile, Denmark, New Guinea, Germany, Holland, Yugoslavia, China, Japan, Poland, France, Nigeria, and the USSR.

• 50:31Holly Frey?

  Today, the Royal Society offers a Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship for early-career scientists who need some flexibility in their work, like parents, caregivers, people with health conditions or disabilities, anything requiring flexibility.

• 50:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's Dorothy Hodgkin. I love her so much.

• 50:48Holly Frey?

  She's great.

• 50:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's why she got a two-part episode. I also have a little bit of listener mail, and this listener mail is from Julia, who wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy, my nine-year-old has been getting really into learning about history, and as a result, we listen to the podcast every time we're in the car together. This week, we're visiting Savannah, Georgia, going on plenty of historic home tours, et cetera. And what episode should come up on our queue but the life and afterlife of Casimir Pulaski? It prompted us to add a visit to the Fort Pulaski National Monument just outside Savannah, which is a really cool interpretive site, and gave us the chance to talk about the history of the fort from colonial times to the present, touching on many topics covered in previous podcast

• 51:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  episodes we've listened to. The fort is also a Gorgeous place to stroll around with tunnels, moats, beautiful views of wetlands and the coast and rolling grass hills. Thanks so much for creating accessible, engaging, rigorous history content for my kiddo to devour and which gives us jumping off points to talk about current events and history IRL. This podcast is solid gold. In lieu of pet tax, I'm including this picture of my kiddo holding a small hermit crab from one of the touch tanks at the nearby Tybee Island Marine Center, a great little aquarium/nature center just down the road from Fort Pulaski, Julia. And indeed, we have a photo of a child's

• 52:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  small hand holding a hermit crab. Very sweet. My brother had a pet hermit crab when we were small children, who was acquired at the beach. Julia, thank you again for this email. I love it. If you would like to send us a note, we're at [email protected]. You can also read the show notes to our episodes at our website, which is missinhistory.com. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.

• 52:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 53:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon. In this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.

• 54:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Long hours, work deadlines, family commitments. You give so much to everyone else, isn't it time to invest in yourself? The University of Arizona Global Campus is built for working adults with flexible online degree programs designed to fit your life. Your previous education, training and eligible experience may even help you earn college credit. At U A G C, you can take one accelerated course at a time, helping you move toward your goals in five and six week class formats. Visit U A G C dot E D U today.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  This is Colin Coward from the Colin Coward Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. All starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or a half ton Tundra to a Toyota's most capable and longest lasting trucks. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. For a great deal today to a great value tomorrow. Shop Toyota dot com. Toyota, let's go places.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.