Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847)
Wednesday, 21 May 2014
Thursday, 15 May 2014
Monday, 12 May 2014
Google Doodle : Dorothy Hodgkin's 104th Birthday
Dorothy Hodgkin's 104th Birthday
Dorothy Mary Hodgkin, OM, FRS (12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994), née Crowfoot, was a British biochemist, credited with the development of protein crystallography. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.
She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography,
a method used to determine the three-dimensional structures of
biomolecules. Among her 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 became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
In 1969, after 35 years of work and five years after winning the Nobel Prize, Hodgkin was able to decipher the structure of insulin.
X-ray crystallography became a widely used tool and was critical in
later determining the structures of many biological molecules where
knowledge of structure is critical to an understanding of function. She
is regarded as one of the pioneer scientists in the field of X-ray
crystallography studies of biomolecules. Hodgkin published as Dorothy Crowfoot until 1949, when she was persuaded by Hans Clarke’s secretary to use her married name on her chapter in The Chemistry of Penicillin. Thereafter she always published as Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin.
Early life
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot was born on 12 May 1910 in Cairo, Egypt, to John Winter Crowfoot (1873–1959), an archaeologist and classical scholar, and Grace Mary Crowfoot née Hood (1877–1957), an archaeologist and expert on Ancient Egyptian textiles. She lived in the English expatriate community in Egypt, returning to England only a few months each year. During one of those stays, when Hodgkin was four, World War I began. Her mother lost four brothers in the war.
Separated from her parents, who would return to Egypt, she was left
under the care of relatives and friends until after the end of the war
when her mother came to England for one year, a period that she later described as the happiest in her life.
In 1921, she entered the Sir John Leman Grammar School in Beccles. Only once, when she was thirteen, did she make an extended visit to her parents, who by then had moved to Khartoum, although both parents continued to visit England each summer.
Education and research
She developed a passion for chemistry from a young age, and her
mother fostered her interest in science in general. Her state school
education left her without Latin or a further science subject, but she
took private tuition in order to enter the University of Oxford entrance examination. At the age of 18 she started studying chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, then one of the University of Oxford colleges for women only.
She studied for a PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of John Desmond Bernal,where she became aware of the potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of proteins, working with him on the technique's first application to analysis of a biological substance, pepsin.
In 1933 she was awarded a research fellowship by Somerville College,
and in 1934, she moved back to Oxford. The college appointed her its
first fellow and tutor in chemistry in 1936, a post which she held until
1977. In the 1940s, one of her students was Margaret Roberts, the
future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who installed a portrait of Hodgkin in Downing Street in the 1980s.
Together with Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton,
she was one of the first people in April 1953 to travel from Oxford to
Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Francis Crick and James Watson, based on data acquired by Rosalind Franklin.
According to the late Dr. Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all
travelled together in two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them
that they were off to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of
DNA.
In 1960, she was appointed the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, a position she held until 1970. This provided her salary, research expenses and research assistance to continue her work at Oxford.
Discoveries
Hodgkin is particularly noted for discovering three-dimensional biomolecular structures. In 1945, working with C. H. (Harry) Carlisle, she published the first such structure of a steroid, cholesteryl iodide (having worked with cholesteryls since the days of her doctoral studies). In 1945, she and her colleagues solved the structure of penicillin, demonstrating (contrary to scientific opinion at the time) that it contains a β-lactam ring. However, the work was not published until 1949. In 1954 she and colleagues began to publish their analysis of vitamin B12.
Insulin structure
Insulin
was one of her most extraordinary research projects. It began in 1934
when she was offered a small sample of crystalline insulin by Robert Robinson. The hormone
captured her imagination because of the intricate and wide-ranging
effect it has in the body. However, at this stage X-ray crystallography
had not been developed far enough to cope with the complexity of the
insulin molecule. She and others spent many years improving the
technique. Larger and more complex molecules were being tackled until in
1969 – 35 years later – the structure of insulin was finally resolved.
But her quest was not finished then. She cooperated with other
laboratories active in insulin research, gave advice, and travelled the
world giving talks about insulin and its importance for diabetes.
Social and personal life
Hodgkin's scientific mentor Professor John Desmond Bernal
greatly influenced her life both scientifically and politically. He was
a distinguished scientist of great repute in the scientific world, a
member of the Communist party, and a faithful supporter of successive Soviet regimes until their invasion of Hungary.
She always referred to him as "Sage"; intermittently, they were lovers.
The conventional marriages of both Bernal and Hodgkin were far from
smooth.
In 1937, Dorothy married Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, then recently returned from working for the Colonial Office and moving into adult education. He later became a well-known Oxford lecturer, author of several fundamental Africanist books and a one-time member of the Communist Party.[citation needed] She always consulted him concerning important problems and decisions. In 1961 Thomas became an advisor to Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana,
in whose country he remained for extended periods, and where she often
visited him. Because of her political activity and her husband's
association with the Communist Party, she was banned from entering the
US in 1953 and subsequently not allowed to visit the country except by CIA waiver.[citation needed] The couple had three children: Luke (born 1938), Elizabeth (born 1941) and Toby (born 1946).
At the age of 24, Hodgkin began experiencing pain in her hands. A visit to a doctor led to a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis
which would become progressively worse and crippling over time with
deformities in both her hands and feet. Eventually, Hodgkin spent a
great deal of time in a wheelchair but continued to persevere despite
her disability.
Despite her scientific specialisation, she was also concerned about social inequalities and stopping conflict. As a consequence she was President of Pugwash from 1976 to 1988. However, Hodgkin also retains some infamy for having written the foreword to the 1983 English edition of Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene, a scientific paper which carried the authorship of Elena Ceausescu,
the wife of the communist dictator of Romania at the time. In the
foreword, Hodgkin speaks glowingly of Ceausescu's "outstanding
achievements" and "impressive" career. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989,
it was widely revealed that Ceausescu never finished secondary school,
never attended university, that her scientific credentials were a hoax,
and the publication in question – like all the research published under
her name throughout her life – was written by a team of scientists in
her name in order to obtain a fraudulent doctorate to advance her
international prestige as a communist political figure.
Honours
Apart from the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1964, she was the second woman recipient of the Order of Merit in 1965 (preceded only by Florence Nightingale), the first woman recipient of the Copley Medal, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a winner of the Lenin Peace Prize, and was Chancellor of Bristol University from 1970 to 1988. She was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) from the University of Bath in 1978.
Cultural references
The Royal Society has established the prestigious Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship for early career stage researchers.
Dorothy Hodgkin was one of five 'Women of Achievement' selected for a
set of British stamps issued in August 1996. The others were Marea Hartman (sports administrator), Margot Fonteyn (ballerina/choreographer), Elisabeth Frink (sculptor) & Daphne du Maurier
(writer). All except Hodgkin were Dames Commander of the Order of the
British Empire (DBEs). In 2010, during its 350th anniversary, the Royal
Society celebrated with the publication of 10 stamps of some of its most
illustrious members, bestowing Professor Hodgkin with her second stamp.
She was in the company of nine men: Isaac Newton, Edward Jenner, Joseph Lister, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Babbage, Robert Boyle, Ernest Rutherford, Nicholas Shackleton and Alfred Russel Wallace.
Council offices in the London Borough of Hackney and buildings at King's College London, University of York, Bristol University and Keele University are named after her, as is the science block at Sir John Leman High School, her former school.
On 12 May 2014, the 104th anniversary of Hodgkin's birthday was commemorated by a Google Doodle.
Monday, 5 May 2014
Google Chrome Standalone Offline Installer Download
Google chrome I a remarkable browser developed by Google, which is light and good for regular browsing activity,
AVG Antivirus & Internet Security 2014 Free License Key
After all those free antivirus trial products from different heavy brands, AVG steps in and provides you with another freebie promotional offer,
Write WhatsApp Messages using Cool & Funky Fonts
Well people are just engaging in the social activities more and more these days, they love to chat, forward some nice quotes and even share some valuable and funny images. Well but thing that everyone wants from these activities is to make their friends happy to see their messages.
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Football Forever : KAKA (THE ULTIMATE STAR)
The Amazing superhero :
Kaká
Full name: Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite
| Date of birth : | 22 April 1982 | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Place of birth : | Gama, DF, Brazil | |||||||||||
| Height : | 1.86 m (6 ft 1 in) | |||||||||||
| Playing position | : Attacking midfielder | |||||||||||
FIFA CRAZE
Brazil 2014 Fixtures and Results
- League:
Friday, 25 April 2014
Thursday, 24 April 2014
Craziness of FIFA 2014
The Craziness of FIFA has grown manifold this time and there would be a blast waiting to happen......
FIFA Secretary General Jérôme Valcke was
joined by Brazilian Minister of Sport Aldo Rebelo and Brazil 2014
Organising Committee (LOC)
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