Why Dorothy Hodgkin belongs on the £50 banknote
The only British woman to win a Nobel prize in science deserves wider recognition
When it comes to the scientist that I want to see on the new £50 note there’s only one contender: Dorothy Hodgkin. She is the only British woman (and one of five in history) to win the Nobel prize in chemistry – and her work has taken on new relevance today with the rise of superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics.
Penicillin marked one of the greatest medical advances of the last century. Yet as early as 1945, discoverer Alexander Fleming recognised that the drug’s overuse could drive the evolution of resistant bacteria. It would take the x-ray studies of Dorothy Hodgkin to reveal the molecular structure of penicillin so that we could understand how resistance was emerging – the first step towards developing new antibiotics.