Dorothy Hodgkin won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determining the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
Hodgkin was a British chemist who advanced the use of X-ray crystallography to reveal the three-dimensional structures of complex biological molecules. Her work on penicillin helped confirm the arrangement of atoms in the antibiotic, while her vitamin B12 research resolved an even more complicated molecular structure containing cobalt.
She later determined the structure of insulin, a project that took many years because insulin crystals were technically difficult to analyze. Structural information of this kind helped chemists understand how medicines and biological molecules work and supported later drug research.
Hodgkin shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with no one; she was the sole recipient that year. She remains the only British woman to have received the chemistry Nobel Prize.