Playing Dorothy

To help mark the centenary of Dorothy Hodgkin's birth a special play will be performed next week at Oxford University's Lady Margaret Hall. The play, 'Hidden Glory: Dorothy Hodgkin in her own words', is a one-woman show starring Miranda Cook and written by Georgina Ferry, Writer in Residence at OUMNH and Hodgkin's biographer. I asked Georgina about Hodgkin, her achievements and bringing an Oxford legend to life: OxSciBlog: Why is Dorothy Hodgkin such an important figure? - Georgina Ferry: Dorothy Hodgkin is the only British woman to have won a science Nobel prize. Only 15 women have ever won the prize for physics, chemistry or medicine. By any standards that makes her exceptional. Her significance as a scientist lies in her great skill in pioneering the technique of X-ray crystallography to study the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in biological molecules. Today, using modern equipment that is many times more powerful, fast and accurate than was available in her time, studies of molecular structure underpin much of biomedical science.