An intimate portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin, the only British woman to win a Nobel Prize for science, for cracking the chemical structures of penicillin and vitamin B12.
An intimate portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin, the only British woman to win a Nobel Prize for science, for cracking the chemical structures of penicillin and vitamin B12.
The correspondence of Nobel Prize winning scientist, Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994), introduced by her biographer, Georgina Ferry.
In the 1940s, Dorothy worked on the structure of a new medicine with a miraculous reputation, penicillin: making her first big breakthrough while breastfeeding her daughter Liz and with her peripatetic husband, Thomas, living and working away from home. Somerville College invented maternity pay for her, a benefit which Dorothy accepted rather reluctantly. As ever, her mother urged her to go gently but, inspired by her discoveries, Dorothy worked harder than ever.
Producer: Anna Buckley.