A book could be written about the laboratory Dorothy joined at Cambridge in 1932. It occupied a handful of cramped, aging rooms in the Department of Mineralogy — spaces that carried little outward sign of importance and would later be demolished to make way for newer construction. A visitor arriving for the first time might have wondered what all the fuss was about. And yet, researchers came from across Europe to work there, drawn by the man at its center. His name was John Desmond Bernal.

Bernal was thirty-one when Dorothy arrived. He was widely read, a man of enormous appetites both intellectual and personal, and one of the most galvanizing scientific minds of his generation. His colleagues called him Sage because he seemed to know something about nearly everything, and to have thought seriously about all of it, though outside of science, he had a particularly keen interest in history, politics, and military strategy.

In time, that restless intelligence would be turned toward the practical demands of war. He would end up helping plan aspects of the Normandy landings, including the analysis of beaches. That Bernal was an outspoken Communist unnerved many in the establishment. But some leaders considered this secondary to the question of whether he was any good. Sir John Anderson, bringing Bernal into the war effort, put it more plainly: “Even if he is as red as the flames in hell, I want him.”

In the laboratory, this meant that the atmosphere crackled. Researchers argued. It mattered less where you were from, and less than elsewhere whether you were a woman; talent and work ethic were the currency of the place.

Bernal believed that to understand life, one needed to understand the structure of proteins, that what a molecule did depended on how it was built, and that X-ray crystallography was the tool that would make that possible. He held the conviction that the structure of matter could be read, and that reading it was worth any effort. This made the laboratory an ideal place for Dorothy. And she settled in immediately, with her assignments advancing quickly as he gave her the freedom to work as she thought best. Between 1933 and 1936, she co-authored twelve papers with him.

Dorothy was happy and had no intention of leaving Cambridge. Thus, when Somerville College at Oxford University offered her a teaching fellowship in 1933, she turned it down. But Somerville returned with improved terms, allowing her more time to continue her work with Bernal before a gradual transition to Oxford and the beginning of her teaching duties. With positions in British science scarce, and those around her, Bernal included, aware of the security and opportunity the post represented, she eventually accepted. She would later write that she did so with great reluctance. After her return to Oxford in 1934, Dorothy would remain there for the rest of her working life.

—

Dorothy was given a corner of the University Museum of Natural History to work in — a Victorian Gothic building better known for its dinosaur skeletons than its chemistry. Max Perutz, one of the most important structural biologists of the 20th century, visited her there and later wrote:

“At Oxford, Dorothy Hodgkin used to labour on the structure of life in a crypt-like room tucked away in a corner of Ruskin’s Cathedral of Science, the Oxford Museum. Her Gothic window was high above, as in a monk’s cell, and beneath it was a gallery reachable only by a ladder. Up there she would mount her crystals for X-ray analysis, and descend precariously, clutching her treasure with one hand and balancing herself on the ladder with the other. For all its gloomy setting, Hodgkin’s lab was a jolly place. As Chemistry Tutor at Somerville she always had girls doing crystal structures for their fourth year and two or three research students of either sex working for their Ph.D.s. They were a cheerful lot, not just because they were young, but because her gentle and affectionate guidance led most of them on to interesting results. Her best-known pupil, however, made her name in a career other than chemistry: Margaret Roberts, later Margaret Thatcher, worked as a fourth-year student on X-ray crystallography in Dorothy Hodgkin’s laboratory. They always maintained a great affection for each other, despite their political differences.”

—

To continue reading: