Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

Georgina Ferry is a freelance science writer and broadcaster. She was formerly a staff editor on New Scientist magazine, and a presenter on Science Now and other programmes for BBC Radio 3 and 4. In 1989 she won the Glaxo Science Writers’ Prize for her radio series, Seven Ages of Health. Her work has been published in a number of national newspapers, including the Independent, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph, and she is Science Editor of Oxford Today. She lives in Oxford with her husband and two sons.

Ferry has brilliantly captured the flavour of a century of science

• Preface1. ‘It was a rather rackety childhood in a way’Cairo and Norfolk, 1910-19282. ‘Don’ t you understand, I’ve got to know!’Somerville and Oxford, 1928-19323. ‘My years at Cambridge were rich with new discoveries’J. D. Bernal and Cambridge, 1932-19344. ‘It’ll serve me absolutely right if the thing is all wrong’Oxford, insulin and Thomas, 1934-19375. ‘Nobody could be indifferent to the search for the truth about proteins’Proteins and pregnancy, 1938-19396. ‘All this penicillin racket you know…’War and penicillin, 1939-19457. ‘The molecule that appears is very beautifully composed’America, Russia and Vitamin B12, 1946-19608. ‘I seem to have spent much more of my life not solving structures than solving them’The Nobel Prize and insulin, 1970-19699. ‘Born not for herself but for the world’China, Africa, India, education and peace, 1959-198810 ‘Recently everything has become more hopeful’Retirement and after, 1977-1994EpilogueAcknowledgementsSelect bibliography and sourcesNotesA Note on the AuthorIndex