Flashback

30 years ago in Chemistry in Britain

When I came back to Oxford in 1934 I needed new apparatus. None of us had any idea of how to go about obtaining money for research, so I went over to see Robert Robinson and he agreed to approach ICI, who gave us a grant of about ?600, which bought two x-ray tubes, a Weissenberg camera and two oscillation cameras. 

In 1949, we began the x-ray analysis of vitamin B₁₂ and eventually found its structure with the aid of three of the first electronic computers - the Mark 1 at Manchester, the Deuce at the National Physical Laboratory and the SWAC in Los Angeles. We had many exciting moments before we saw the molecule complete, with Durward Cruickshank and Kenneth Trueblood steering the calculations.... 

My current interest is insulin, down to essential atomic resolution. The number in my research group in recent years has averaged out at about ten. I like to know what is happening and take some part. I know I could not easily work as a remote director of research.... 

I believe there is still a great deal of excitement in x-ray crystallography. Today many x-ray analyses are undertaken in a routine way to find the arrangements of the atoms in space. But there are still crystals with complexities which challenge us and there are the phenomena of the packing of molecules in crystals which are puzzling.... 

In the future the use of synchrotron radiation may make it possible to collect data from extremely small, very interesting crystals.

Extracted from an interview with Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (April 1977)