Seeing through to the truth

When Dorothy Hodgkin won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1964 the Daily Tele- graph announced that the award had gone to a "mother of three", while the Observer described "Mrs Hodgkin" as "an affable-looking housewife". If our attitudes to women scientists have changed at all since then - and some would say they have not changed much - it is thanks in no small way to women like Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994). Many women scientists and technologists will acknowledge the importance of role models in influencing their career and subject choices. For those of us women who choose science, these are our suffragettes.

As a young graduate Hodgkin herself benefited from the support of friends and colleagues and she in turn created a supportive environment for others. Later, she donated her various prize moneys to aiding other scientists in less well-off countries. Yet most people, asked to name a woman who has won a Nobel science prize, will probably be able to name only Marie Curie. Dorothy Hodgkin deserves to be better known.

As a young student I was privileged to hear her give a seminar at TCD in the late 1970s. She came across as quite unassuming - and, yes, affable-looking - skilfully explaining things so that everyone present could understand. Georgina Ferry's biography, written with the blessing of Hodgkin's family, fleshes out that first impression with a comprehensive account of her life and work, political activities - she was a lifelong socialist - and principled stance on everything from the Vietnam War to the social uses of science. For many years she was president of the "Pugwash conferences on science and social affairs" which, under its current president, Joseph Rotblat, recently won a Nobel peace prize.

This book will no doubt interest women scientists, but it also merits a wider audience - arguably every research manager should read it - and it should appeal to an Irish readership, as one of the main characters is the fascinating Tipperary man John Desmond Bernal (aka "The Sage"; 19011971): communist, radical, and Hodgkin's lifelong mentor, colleague, friend and, briefly, lover. Irish-born Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971), who worked in the same field and was another of Hodgkin's friends, also features.

The research all three were engaged in was relatively new: using X-ray photography to elucidate the shape of complex chemicals. Knowing the three-dimensional structure of a biological molecule, such as a protein or hormone, is crucial to understanding how it functions, and in the early 1950s Rosalind Franklin's X-ray photographs were important in revealing DNA's double helix. Back in the 1930s Lonsdale was the first to discover the structure of benzene, and Bernal was among the first to use the new technique on biological molecules. Hodgkin went on to discover the structure of insulin, penicillin and vitamin B-12. While these substances were chosen for their scientific challenge, it no doubt pleased Hodgkin that they were also medically useful. Ferry conveys the excitement, attraction and frustration of the work, and indeed of research in general. Unfortunately, non-scientists will need a simpler explanation of X-ray crystallography than she gives here, and it is a pity there are no explanatory diagrams and only one X-ray photograph.

But perhaps the strongest point that comes across from this book is the importance of a supportive working environment. This is no doubt something that every employee could identify with, but it is crucial for women working in a male-dominated discipline like the sciences.

Hodgkin benefited from Bernal's support from the start; Lonsdale's boss, William Bragg, secured extra funding so that she could afford to pay for home help; but when Rosalind Franklin joined King's College London in the early 1950s, women were not even allowed into the senior common room.

Women may have the common room key today, but they still struggle both to balance professional and private lives and to assert themselves as women in a world that continues to be male-dominated. Sadly, we still need role models. Dorothy Hodgkin is a valuable one.