7 Things You Don't Know About Dorothy Hodgkin

Like Marie Curie, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was a pioneer in science. She was the third woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Curie being the first, "for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances". It was 1964, where there weren't many female laureates. She would turn 104 on May 12.

Dorothy Hodgkin was best known for the advancement of the technique of X-ray crystallography, but this wasn't her only achievement. Born to parents who were archaeologists and scholars, she would be a role model to up-and-coming girls, one of whom would be a politician later in life. Here are seven things that you might not know about her:

1. It was Grace Mary Crowfoot who would foster her daughter's interest in science. The former was an expert on Ancient Egyptian textiles, where she and John Winter Crowfoot lived in an English expatriate community in Egypt for many years. They would visit the young Dorothy in England every summer, under the care of relatives and friends. The young lass also got the chance to visit her parents, spending hours on excavation sites. She enjoyed the experience, such that she almost chose archeology over chemistry.

2. The young Dorothy became first interested in crystal at the age of ten. She was fascinated by it, such that on her sixteenth birthday, one of her gifts was a book about using X-rays to analyze such solid materials. This would inspire the teenage prodigy.

3. One of her students was Margaret Roberts, who would become the future Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of Great Britain. Hodgkin made a good impression on the young Thatcher, as her portrait was installed on 10 Downing Street.

4. She married Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, a fellow lecturer, in 1937. They have three children. Both were committed socialists. (She won the Lenin Peace Prize, then Soviet Union's equivalent to the Nobel Prize.) But it was John Desmond Bernal, one of the most well-known scientists in Britain during that time, who was her mentor. He would influence her political views, as he was a faithful supporter of the Soviet regime until the invasion of Hungary in 1956. (This, among many things, made Bernal a controversial figure during his lifetime.)

5. Hodgkin was twenty four when she began experiencing pain in her hands. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which would become progressively worse, crippling over time. This would lead to a life in a wheelchair, but this didn't stop her from making her contribution in science.

6. The year after becoming a Nobel laureate, Hodgkin was a recipient of the Order of Merit, a recognition on individuals with distinguished service in the armed forces, art, literature, science, or for the promotion of culture. She was the second woman to achieve such feat, the first being Florence Nightingale.

7. Hodgkin was credited with the discovery of three-dimensional biomolecular structures. Insulin was also one her outstanding research projects, which took her thirty five years to completion.