Do your students love exploring science and nature?
A recent Google doodle honored the birthday of biochemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. Hodgkin is famous for her important achievements in protein crystallography, for which she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. Before her remarkable accomplishments as an adult, Hodgkin was a curious girl who loved exploring the natural world in England, the Middle East, and Northern Africa.
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot was born May 12, 1910 in Cairo, Egypt, to English parents. Her mother Grace Mary Crowfoot (Hood) was an archaeologist and scholar of ancient textiles, and her father John Winter Crowfoot was an archaeologist and classical scholar. Dorothy was the oldest of her parents four daughters. Her mother encouraged Dorothy’s curiosity and interest in science as a girl. According to the Chemical Heritage Foundation, as a child “She enjoyed using a portable mineral analysis kit to analyze pebbles that she and her sister found in the stream running through the family garden in Khartoum, Sudan.”
When she was only 24, Hodgkin was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. This disease would eventually lead to crippling deformities in her hands and feet but she continued to remain active as a scientist and peace activist. She improved the techniques of X-Ray crystallography, and used X-rays to determine the structures of important biomolecules, including penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin.
My Nature & Science books, including Leveled Book set Kindergarten Levels A/B, Louis Pasteur - Exploring Pasteurization and Vaccines, and The Legend of the Unicorn: The Narwhal.
No comments:
Post a Comment