Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin went to school in Suffolk and went on to change the world. So why have so few Suffolk people heard of her?

Eastern Daily Press: Dorothy as a young woman (Picture: Beccles Museum)Dorothy as a young woman (Picture: Beccles Museum) (Image: Archant)

Two little girls stand in the back row of their chemistry class. Heads bowed, surrounded by test tubes and petri-dishes, beakers and vials, it is clear that nothing can divert them from completing their experiment.

This, it turns out, is unsurprising, bearing in mind how hard the girls had to fight to be in this lesson at all.

From their clothing, it is clear that this picture was taken nearly 100 years ago – around 1922 at a guess.

And, at second glance, something else becomes obvious.

Eastern Daily Press: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin discovered the molecular structure of penicillin, ensuring that it could be mass produced. Picture: Beccles MuseumDorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin discovered the molecular structure of penicillin, ensuring that it could be mass produced. Picture: Beccles Museum (Image: Archant)

Although the classroom is full, the two girls at the back are the o n l y girls in the room.

The photograph was taken at the Sir John Leman school in Beccles and the girls were named Dorothy Crowfoot and Norah Pusey.

Girls were supposed to only do domestic science at that time but Dorothy and Norah argued, successfully, that they should be allowed to do chemistry instead.

Had they lost that battle, we would have all been sorry, for Dorothy went on to become Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, a

world renowned scientist who discovered the molecular structure of penicillin.

Because of Dorothy's work in crystallography, it became possible for penicillin to be mass produced.

Similarly, she also, after a lifelong quest, identified the molecular structure of insulin, and over 100 other compounds of great value to medicine.

She won a Nobel prize and was President of the Pugwash Society – an international group of scientists who, throughout the

Cold War and beyond, pledged that their scientific knowledge should only ever be used for the good of mankind.

Every child in Britain should know Dorothy's name.

Every little girl who dreams of being more than is expected of her should grow up knowing what Dorothy achieved.

But the truth is that most people, even people who have lived their entire lives a mere stone's throw from where Dorothy grew up, have never heard of her.

James Woodrow, former curator of the Beccles museum, believes it is time that changed.

He is planning to write to the Prime Minister, Theresa May, as part of a campaign to have Dorothy and her achievements added to the Key Stage One curriculum so that when children learn about

Florence Nightingale and Admiral Lord Nelson, they also learn about Dorothy.

'Dorothy was truly remarkable,' he says. 'When I first started as a curator at the museum in 1997, I started reading up on her and when I discovered all that she had achieved, I was astonished that I hadn't heard of her.

'I have even met people who went to her school who haven't.

'It's astonishing.

'She was a modest woman. It was well known in her laboratory that she always insisted that everyone call her Dorothy, because she believed that everybody was equal, from the Nobel winning scientist that she was to the most junior researcher.

'She was very interested in communism for a time because she believed so strongly that everyone should have an equal opportunity in life. She also supported nuclear disarmament, in line with her belief that science

should only ever be used for the universal good.'

Dorothy's left wing political views often put her at odds with her former pupil at Oxford – Margaret Thatcher, who, of course, read chemistry at Oxford.

Dorothy's biographer, Georgina Ferry, found a scrappy piece of paper in Dorothy's archive headed, 'Notes for

Margaret' which said: 'Object: to rethink relations with the Soviet Union on the basis that friendship is possible and would be to everyone's advantage – trade – science – art – the lot.'

The two women met and corresponded on many occasions over the years and Mrs Thatcher always gave detailed responses to

whatever points Dorothy made. She denied that ultimately declaring Gorbachev 'a man I can do business with' had anything to do with Dorothy, but evidence suggested that Dorothy was at the very least someone Mrs Thatcher listened to, which is notable in itself.

'We just took a different view,' Mrs Thatcher wrote. 'She couldn't dissuade me, and I couldn't dissuade her.'

That said, when Mrs Thatcher went to Moscow in 1987, she made a point of visiting the USSR Academy of Science's Institute of Crystallography, where Dorothy was well known and regarded.

And when delegates from the same institute visited Mrs Thatcher in Downing Street a year later, they noticed that it was Dorothy's portrait that Mrs Thatcher displayed on her study wall.

Dorothy herself had gone to Oxford from Sir John Leman, after she had achieved the highest marks overall of any girl candidate in the School Leaving Certificate set by the Oxford Local Examinations Board.

Dorothy, who was the eldest of four sisters, won a place at Somerville College because, as she later wrote, 'It was part of my father's plan for me that I should be educated in the same way as a son, and therefore go to Oxford University.'

Her great friend Norah Pusey wasn't so lucky. Although Norah actually achieved higher marks than Dorothy in the School Cert chemistry paper, her parents sent her instead to domestic science college.

'I don't think I shall stick this place for more than two years as at times I feel dreadfully out of things,' she wrote to Dorothy.

'I am considered an awful swot and I really don't work hard….I want to take applied chemistry instead of needlework but I don't think it would be of use to me financially.'

The words of the little girl who wanted so badly to do chemistry ring out across the generations as a message to all children who might be talked out of fulfilling their potential, by the limitations set by others.

Norah died in her early 20s from tuberculosis, having never fulfilled hers.

Dorothy won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964 'for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances'.

Our children should know all about her and remember all that she achieved.

And, as parents and guardians of the next generation, we would do well to remember Norah, too

FACT FILE

* Dorothy was born in Cairo in 1910 where her father, John Crowfoot, was working as an educational administrator.

* When Kitchener transferred him to the Sudan, he moved his wife and four daughters to the family home at Geldeston, Beccles for their education.

* He sent Dorothy to the local state school, Sir John Leman in Beccles, from 1921 until 1928.

* Before that, she attended classes at Beccles rectory where she made solutions of alum and copper sulphate and watched as they evaporated, and crystals gradually appeared. 'I was captured for life,' she said.

* Dorothy Hodgkin became only the third Oxford woman to obtain a first in chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford.

* In 1932 after a meeting on a train, she was given a research place at Cambridge with J D Bernal, who had started research on the study of crystals by X-ray diffraction.

* She married Thomas Lionel Hodgkin in 1937. They had three children, Luke, Elizabeth and Toby.

* It took Dorothy three years (until 1945) to discover the molecular structure of pencillin which enabled it to be mass produced.

* When Dorothy was 28, she was diagnosed with acute rheumatoid arthritis. Eventually, she became wheelchair-bound but 'she never complained and continued to work to improve all our lives. The way she treated people brought from them love, pride and loyalty,' says James Woodrow.

* In 1947 she was the first woman to be elected 'Fellow of the Royal Society'.

* In 1964 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, only the third woman and the first English woman so honoured.

* In 1965 Dorothy became the first person to be awarded the 'Honorary Freedom of the Borough of Beccles'. In her speech, she said: 'I belong here in a way that I don't to any other part of the country.'

* Dorothy Hodgkin has been featured on two issues of Royal Mail postage stamps - in 1996 and 2010.

* She died in 1994, aged 84.