Which chemist determined the structure of penicillin using X-ray crystallography?

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin determined the structure of penicillin using X-ray crystallography.

Hodgkin and her colleagues used diffraction patterns produced when X-rays passed through crystals to infer the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms. Her analysis established penicillin’s structure, helping chemists understand the antibiotic and improve related drugs.

She also determined the structures of vitamin B12 and insulin, two exceptionally demanding achievements for the technology of her era. Hodgkin received the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her determinations of important biochemical substances by X-ray techniques.

X-ray crystallography does not photograph molecules directly. Instead, scientists interpret patterns of scattered X-rays using mathematical analysis. Hodgkin’s work is sometimes confused with Rosalind Franklin’s DNA research, but the two scientists made distinct contributions in different structural problems.