Google celebrates Dorothy Hodgkin’s 104th Birthday with a doodle

Zee Media Bureau/Shruti Saxena

New Delhi: Google on Monday marked 104th birthday of the British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin. Visitors on the homepage are treated with a doodle which depicts atomic and molecular structure of a crystal. Born on 12 May 1910 in Cairo, Egypt, Dorothy Hodgkin is credited with the development of X-ray crystallography. X-ray crystallography is a tool used to determine the atomic and molecular structure of biomolecules. According to Wikipedia, Hodgkin`s most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin that Ernst Boris Chain and Edward Abraham had previously surmised, and then the structure of vitamin B12, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Further, in 1969, after 35 years of work, Hodgkin was able to decipher the structure of insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas which is responsible for regulationg blood glucose level in the human body. Hodgkin died at the age of 84 in England.