After leaving school in 1928, Dorothy studied at Somerville College, Oxford where she quickly established her reputation as an exceptional student. While in Oxford she became particularly interested in the study of crystals and decided to concentrate her research on X-ray crystallography.
After graduating from Oxford, with a first class honours, Dorothy spent 2 years at Cambridge where she assisted John Desmond Bernal in recording the first X-ray diffraction pattern from a protein crystal, the digestive enzyme pepsin.
She returned to Oxford in 1934 where she continued her research. She set up her own X-ray equipment in a new laboratory in the University Museum where she was able to crystallise and X-ray photograph insulin and, in 1955, took the first X-ray diffraction photographs of vitamin B-12.
Dorothy became a university lecturer and demonstrator at Oxford in 1946 and a reader in X-ray crystallography in 1956. As her reputation in the field of crystallography became more established the honours quickly followed. In 1947 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for her work on penicillin. In 1956 she was presented with the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II. Dorothy also became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences in 1956 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958.
In 1964 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her work on vitamin B-12, only the third woman ever to receive it. Her greatest scientific achievement was still to come and in 1969, 34 years after her research began, she discovered the three dimensional structure of the protein insulin.
Throughout her work Dorothy consistently pushed the boundaries of what was possible with the techniques and tools available. In 1976 her contribution was recognised by the Royal Society who presented her with the Copley medal, their most prestigious award. She was the first woman to receive it.
From 1976 to 1988 she was chair of the Pugwash Movement, a group of scientists who believe that scientific knowledge must be utilised in a constructive way, beyond the interests of individual groups or countries, so that the achievements of science and technology work for global benefit.
In 1937, Dorothy married Thomas Hodgkin. She died in July 1994, as a result of a stroke, at her home in Shipston-on-Stour, England.
