Look at a standard antibiotic pill. It just looks
like a tiny, unremarkable piece of chalk. Right,
completely ordinary. But inside that little white
tablet is a... Well, that's a microscopic architectural
marvel. It's this very specific three -dimensional
geometric shape that literally, physically locks
into the bacteria in your body and destroys it.
Exactly. It's all about the shape. Yeah. And
today, our mission is to uncover the story of
the person who actually drew the blueprints for
that invisible world. Oh, it's such a good story.
It really is. We are taking a deep dive into
a comprehensive dossier on Dorothy Hodgkin. She
remains the only British woman to ever win a
Nobel Prize in any of the sciences, which is
just wild. Still the only one. Still the only
one. This is a woman who successfully mapped
the invisible architecture of the world's most
important, life -saving drugs. Like penicillin
and insulin. Exactly. And she did all of this
while battling a severely debilitating physical
disability and, you know, navigating the incredibly
tense, politically charged minefields of the
Cold War. Yeah, to truly understand the macroscopic
effects of modern medicine, like why a drug actually
cures you, you first have to understand the microscopic
geometry of atoms. And Dorothy Hodgkin was...
Without exaggeration, I mean, she was the ultimate
cartographer of that invisible landscape. Which
is fascinating because her story actually starts
with physical, tangible history before moving
into the invisible. Oh, you mean her childhood?
Yeah, exactly. So she was born Dorothy Mary Crowfoot
in Cairo in 1910. Her parents were archaeologists
and colonial administrators. Right. But her childhood
was immediately disrupted. I mean, in 1914, World
War I breaks out. And at just four years old,
she is separated from her parents. That's so
young. I know, right? She's left with her grandparents
in England while her parents eventually end up
in Sudan. You have to imagine the profound sense
of dislocation for a child going through that.
Yeah, definitely. But, you know, it's actually
during this separation that she starts looking
very closely at the physical world around her.
How so? Well, by age 10, she's developing this
really deep fascination with crystals. She and
her sister are actually out studying pebbles
and streams with a portable mineral analysis
kit. Wow, a portable kit at 10 years old. Yeah.
And her mother, who was a botanist yourself,
actively encourages this. That's awesome. It
is. On Dorothy's 16th birthday, her mother gives
her a book by W .H. Bragg called Concerning the
Nature of Things. And this book is all about
x -ray crystallography. It basically planted
the seed that atoms aren't just abstract ideas,
you know. Right. They're not just math equations.
Exactly. They're physical objects that can be
located and mapped out. And that is exactly the
field she would go on to pioneer. But the path
into academia was incredibly frustrating for
her. Oh, the institutional roadblocks. Yeah,
it was ridiculous. She attended the Lehman Grammar
School, where she was one of only two girls even
allowed to study chemistry. Wow, two. Just two.
And when it came time to apply to Oxford, she
hit this massive barrier. Her state school didn't
teach Latin to girls. Right, because obviously
you need a dead language to understand. chemical
structure. Exactly. It perfectly highlights the
completely arbitrary barriers for women in science
at the time. It really does. Thankfully, her
headmaster steps in and privately tutors her
in Latin just so she can pass the Oxbridge entrance
exam. That's a great head, man. Yeah, seriously.
But before she actually goes to Oxford in 1928,
she joins her parents at an archaeological site
in Drosh. That's in present -day Jordan, right?
Exactly. And she spends over a year there. creating
these really precise scale drawings of fifth
and sixth century Byzantine mosaics. Just meticulously
drawing them. Yes. Okay, let's unpack this. She's
mapping out thousands of tiny fragmented glass
tiles to reveal a larger hidden picture. To me,
that sounds literally like the perfect training
ground for X -ray crystallography, isn't it?
Just swapping out ancient mosaic tiles for atomic
structures. That analogy is incredibly accurate,
actually. X -ray crystallography is entirely
about recognizing complex three -dimensional
spatial patterns from scattered fragmented data.
So it's basically puzzle solving. Exactly. Think
of it like this. Imagine shining a flashlight
through a spinning disco ball in a dark room.
Okay, I'm picturing it. You can't actually see
the disco ball itself, right? But you can see
the thousands of tiny dots of light it scatters
all over the walls. Right, the reflections. Right.
So in crystallography, you shine an X -ray beam
through a crystallized molecule. The atoms in
the crystal cause the X -rays to diffract or
scatter in very specific directions. So by measuring
the angles and the brightness of all those scattered
dots of light on the wall, you basically have
to mathematically work backward. Precisely. To
figure out the exact shape of the disco ball
that cast them. Exactly. You are reverse engineering
the position of every single atom based purely
on the shadow it casts. That sounds impossibly
tedious. It was. But the meticulous, obsessive
attention to detail she developed, measuring
and drawing those mosaic tiles, that perfectly
primed her brain for the groundbreaking structural
chemistry she would later do at Oxford and Cambridge.
And that specific wiring, the ability to see
the objective picture through all the static.
That is exactly what she needed to shock the
scientific establishment in the 1940s. The penicillin
breakthrough. Yeah. So Alexander Fleming had
discovered penicillin. Howard Flory and Ernst
Chain figured out how to isolate it. Right. But
nobody actually knew what the molecule looked
like. And until you know what it looks like,
you can't truly understand how it works or how
to mass produce it. Penicillin was a biological
miracle, sure. But structurally, it was a complete
mystery. Right. In 1945, Hodgkin and her team,
which included biochemist Barbara Lowe, they
finally solved its structure. And what they found
was highly controversial, right? Very. She demonstrated
that penicillin contained a specific structural
feature called a beta -lactam ring. Okay, here's
where it gets really interesting. I need to pause
you there because the sources note that the top
chemists in the world thought this ring structure
was completely impossible. They absolutely did.
Wait, so she proved the scientific consensus
wrong. How does the establishment react when
a young female chemist tells them they have the
basic structural shape of this miracle drug completely
wrong? And what exactly is a beta -lactam ring
anyway? Okay, so a beta -lactam ring is essentially
a tight four -membered square of atoms, specifically
carbon and nitrogen. Okay, a square. Right. But
normally, these atoms want to bond at comfortable,
wide angles. Forcing them into a tight 90 -degree
square creates immense geometric strain. Like
trying to bend stiff wood. Exactly. It's like
trying to bend thick wood into a tiny, sharp
-angled box without it snapping. The leading
chemical minds of the era believed that forcing
atoms into that shape created too much inherent
instability. They just thought it was physically
impossible. Yeah, they thought nature simply
couldn't build something so inherently fragile.
But Hodgkin trusted her data, right? I mean,
the electron density map she generated through
her X -rays didn't lie. They didn't. She essentially
proved that the entire chemical establishment
was working off a fundamentally flawed assumption.
Her map was undeniable. And ironically, that
exact instability is why penicillin actually
works. Wait, really? The instability is the point?
Yeah. The ring is under so much physical strain
that when it encounters a bacteria, it bursts
open and binds to the bacterial cell wall, completely
destroying it. That is fascinating. So it's like
a loaded spring. Exactly like a loaded spring.
And once our beta -lactam ring was accepted,
it completely opened the door for pharmaceutical
companies to develop whole new classes of synthetic
antibiotics. But that stubbornness, that refusal
to accept the establishment's flawed assumptions,
that was exactly what she needed for her next
target. Oh, vitamin B12. Yes. Because if penicillin
was a puzzle, vitamin B12 was an absolute labyrinth.
B12 is a massive, highly complex molecule. Just
to give you a sense of scale. Give me the numbers.
Penicillin has around 40 atoms. Vitamin B12 has
over 180 atoms. Wow. That's a huge jump. It really
is. It had been discovered at Merck, and they
had actually managed to crystallize it, but they'd
only published its refractive indices. OK, what
does that actually mean, a refractive index?
Well, a refractive index just tells you how much
light slows down and bends when it enters a substance.
Like when a straw looks bent in a glass of water.
Exactly that. It's a basic physical property
of the material, but it tells you absolutely
nothing about where the individual atoms are
actually located in three -dimensional space.
So it's basically useless for a structural map?
Pretty much. Almost all of the 180 atoms in B12
were completely unaccounted for, except for a
single heavy atom of cobalt right at its center.
Just one atom out of 180. So how do you even
begin to map something that chaotic? By using
every observational tool available. She first
studied the pleochroic properties of the B12
crystals. Pleochroic. Yeah, pleochroism is an
optical phenomenon where a substance appears
to be different colors when you look at it from
different angles. Oh, like a gemstone changing
color. Right. So by carefully observing how the
crystals absorbed light and changed color, she
deduced that there had to be a flat, ring -like
structure hiding inside this massive molecule.
Okay, so she finds a starting point. Exactly.
She then used X -ray crystallography, using that
heavy cobalt atom as a sort of structural anchor,
to painstakingly calculate the position of all
the other atoms around it. And the scientific
community's reaction to this was monumental.
I mean, the scientist Lawrence Bragg, the very
man who wrote the book, her mother gave her.
The inventor of X -ray crystallography himself.
Right. He described her solving of the B12 structure
as being as significant as breaking the sound
barrier. It completely shattered the existing
limits of biochemistry. How so? Well before Hodgkin,
the consensus was that these incredibly large
chaotic biological molecules were simply too
complex to map. They just thought it couldn't
be done. Yeah. But by publishing the final structure
of B12 in 1955 and 1956, she proved that no molecule
was too large to decode if you had the right
mathematical discipline. And that was the primary
discovery that won her the Nobel Prize in chemistry
in 1964, right? Yes, exactly. And incredibly,
B12 wasn't even her biggest challenge. Not even
close. Right. If B12 was breaking the sound barrier,
her next major project was her moon landing.
It was a goal so distant that it took almost
her entire adult life to achieve. We are talking
about insulin. The hormone that regulates blood
sugar. Exactly. I mean, it is the absolute difference
between life and death for millions of people
managing diabetes. She was actually given her
first small sample of crystalline insulin way
back in 1934 by the chemist Robert Robinson.
Wait, 1934. That is before she solved penicillin.
Before B12, she held onto this molecule for 35
years before finally publishing its structure
in 1969. Why did it take over three decades?
Because the mathematical computing power of the
1930s simply wasn't advanced enough. Oh, she
had the data but couldn't crunch the numbers.
Exactly. Insulin is a protein. It is vastly more
complex than even vitamin B12. Wow. When you
shine an x -ray through an insulin crystal, it
produces millions of scattered data points. The
sheer volume of mathematical calculations required
to translate that matrix of spatial data into
a 3D model, it was completely beyond human capacity.
Like, it would take a person doing it by hand
centuries. Literally centuries. She had to wait
for the invention of high -speed digital computers
that could crunch those massive matrices of spatial
data in minutes. rather than lifetimes. So what
does this all mean? Like, why should you, the
listener, care about the physical shape of insulin?
It's a game changer. It is. Having that 3D map
changed everything. Before Hodgkin, we knew insulin
worked, but we were essentially extracting it
from animals like pigs and cows and just hoping
for the best. Right, which wasn't ideal. No.
Her 3D map was like having the exact blueprints
to a locked vault. Once she gave us those blueprints,
scientists could suddenly see exactly how the
molecule folded. And then they could mass produce
it synthetically. Exactly. They could alter its
structure to create the faster acting or slower
acting variants that are used to manage diabetes
today. actions after solving insulin tell you
everything you need to know about her philosophy
as a scientist. Oh, absolutely. Because many
researchers would fiercely guard a discovery
of that magnitude. They would patent it, hoard
the data, monetize it. Of course they would.
But Hodgkin did the exact opposite. She had led
a team of young international scientists to solve
it. And then she spent the following years traveling
the globe, openly cooperating with other laboratories
and giving talks. just giving the data away.
Yeah, to ensure her structural map was used to
actually treat both type 1 and type 2 diabetes
globally. Which brings us to a really grueling
reality of her life. We've been talking about
the immense scale of her scientific achievements,
but we have to look at the physical toll it took
to make them. It was significant. Yeah. When
she was just 24 years old, right around the time
she first got that insulin sample, she was diagnosed
with severe rheumatoid arthritis. And we should
clarify, rheumatoid arthritis isn't just standard
joint wear and tear. Right. It is an autoimmune
condition where the body attacks its own joints.
Her hands and feet became severely swollen and
visibly deformed. That sounds incredibly painful.
She experienced prolonged debilitating pain.
And for a scientist whose entire life's work
relies on the delicate manipulation of microscopic
crystals. I mean, it is an incredibly cruel irony.
It really is. Imagine trying to manipulate microscopic
crystals when your hands are so swollen you can't
even flip a standard switch. Like trying to thread
a tiny needle while wearing thick, heavy winter
gloves. That was her daily reality in the lab.
She had to mount fraction of a millimeter crystals
onto glass capillaries when her hands were so
swollen she couldn't even close her fingers.
She literally had to build a custom lever for
her x -ray machine just to keep working. Because
she couldn't grip the standard power switch.
Right. She couldn't grip it. She spent her later
years in a wheelchair, but she never stopped.
Her mind was mapping the perfect geometry of
life -saving drugs while her own body's architecture
was actively betraying her. That level of personal
resilience is just astounding. And, you know,
that same resilience extended far beyond the
laboratory, straight into the geopolitical landscape
of the 20th century. Oh, her political life.
It was defined by staggering contradictions that
are just fascinating to look at historically.
Definitely. We see her navigating massive ideological
divides without cleanly fitting into any single
political box. Yet domestically, she was a lifelong
supporter of the Labor Party. Right. Yet in the
1940s at Oxford, one of her chemistry students
was Margaret Roberts, who we know today as Margaret
Thatcher. Right. The conservative prime minister.
Exactly. And despite being on completely opposite
ends of the political spectrum, Thatcher had
immense respect for her former teacher. When
Thatcher became prime minister, she actually
proudly hung a portrait of Hodgkin in her office
at 10 Downing Street. Which is wild. But internationally,
her associations caused immense friction with
Western government. Oh, huge friction. Her mentor,
the man who taught her crystallography and with
whom she actually had a romantic relationship
before her marriage, was J .D. Bernal. And he
was very vocal. Yes, he was a vocal, open member
of the Communist Party. Plus, her husband, the
historian Thomas Hodgkin, was also an intermittent
member of the Communist Party. And because of
these deep ties, the geopolitical consequences
for her were severe. Right. By 1953, the United
States had completely banned her from entering
the country as a security risk. Completely banned
her? Yeah. The only way she could attend scientific
conferences in the U .S. was by securing a special
waiver directly from the CIA. Meanwhile, she
is warmly embraced by the other side of the Iron
Curtain. Oh yeah, totally different reception.
She maintains strong collaborative contacts with
scientists in the Soviet Union and in China,
visiting China multiple times starting in 1959.
And in 1987, the Soviet government under Mikhail...
by the US government as a security risk, awarded
a Peace Prize by the Soviet Union, and yet her
portrait is proudly hung in the office of a famously
conservative British prime minister. That's quite
the resume. It really is. And I just want to
pause here and be incredibly clear. We are absolutely
not taking any political sides here or endorsing
any of these viewpoints left or right. We're
simply reporting the wildly fascinating contradictions
of her life. exactly as documented in the source
material. Well said. And I think to synthesize
all of this, you have to understand that Hodgkin's
core value was simply that knowledge has no borders.
Yeah, that makes sense. Her political actions,
like serving for 12 years as the president of
the Pugwash Conference. Which was fighting for
nuclear disarmament, right? Exactly. Those actions,
along with her scientific collaborations in places
like Moscow and Beijing, were driven by a singular,
unshakable belief. She fundamentally believed
that human progress, whether it was curing disease
or preventing nuclear war, had to transcend the
artificial geopolitical boundaries created by
governments. She really lived her life operating
on a totally different frequency. While governments
were drawing lines on maps to separate people,
she was drawing the maps of the molecules that
keep all of those people alive. That's a beautiful
way to put it. So, to you listening. The next
time you take a course in antibiotics or you
see someone managing their diabetes with an insulin
pen, think about Dorothy Hodgkin. You are benefiting
directly from a woman who visualized the invisible
through sheer intellect, who built custom levers
when her hands failed her, and who shattered
both scientific paradigms and international borders
to share the objective truth of what she found.
It's an incredible legacy. And yet... You know,
even a mind entirely dedicated to the objective
truth can be confronted with profound paradoxes.
What do you mean? Well, I want to leave you with
a final thought today. It's a strange historical
footnote pulled from the sources that we haven't
touched on yet. Oh, OK. Let's hear it. Late in
her life, at the age of 73, Hodgkin was asked
to write a foreword for the English edition of
a chemistry book about polymers. Just a standard
textbook. Seemingly. And she wrote this glowing
introduction, praising the author's quote, outstanding
achievements and impressive career. Let me guess,
given her global travels, this wasn't just a
standard academic colleague from Oxford. Far
from it. The author was Elena Siascu. Wait, Chascu?
Like the wife of Romania's brutal communist dictator?
The very same. And after the Romanian Revolution
in 1989, when the regime fell, the truth came
out. Elena Siascu hadn't even finished secondary
school. Are you serious? Completely serious.
Her entire scientific career was a fabrication.
That polymer book had been ghostwritten by a
team of actual scientists who were forced by
the state to secure her a fraudulent doctrine.
Wow. To build a political cult of personality.
Exactly. That is staggering. A complete hoax.
It is. And it raises a deeply philosophical question,
one that I want you to mull over long after we
wrap up today. Yeah. How is it that one of the
most brilliant scientific minds in human history
A woman whose entire legacy was built on looking
past the surface, penetrating solid matter with
x -rays to find the absolute undeniable truth
could have such a massive blind spot when it
came to a fabricated political and scientific
persona. That is the ultimate muddy water, isn't
it? The mathematics of crystallography work perfectly
on a chaotic molecule, but point that same lens
at human nature and the picture gets completely
blurred. Thanks for taking this deep dive with
us.