HODGKIN, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot. Structure of Vitamin B12. [with:] The X-ray Crystallographic Investigation of the Structure of Penicillin [with: six other offprints].
1945-65.

Exceptional collection of inscribed offprints, from the library of crystallographer Jack D. Dunitz, of Hodgkin’s most important papers, in which she solved the molecular structure of penicillin and vitamin B12, the last which revealed the existence of a hitherto-unsuspected chemical grouping, the corrin nucleus. Lawrence Bragg compared these achievements with ‘breaking the sound barrier’, and in 1964 Hodgkin received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.

[Papers 1-2:] “The structure of vitamin B12, published in Nature in July 1956, represented a giant step forward for x-ray crystallography. The Oxford-Princeton collaboration had provided structural information that was not available from traditional methods of organic analysis, which Hodgkin described in an earlier paper as ‘for any crystallographer something of a dream-like situation.’ Even more impressively, the planar group of B12 was a novel chemical entity, for which the term corrin nucleus was later coined.” (DSB). After the first announcement, in the journal Nature, Hodgkin and her team published a series of papers detailing their discoveries in the Proceedings of the Royal Society [see ‘Landmarks of Science & Medicine from the Library of Andras Gedeon’ lot 156]. Offered here is the rare offprint from Nature annotated by Dunitz together with the offprint of the first of the eight parts from the Proceedings inscribed by Hodgkin.

[Paper 3:] “In collaboration with Charles Bunn and Anne Turner-Jones at ICI’s Northwich laboratories, who analyzed the sodium salt using the ‘fly’s eye’ method of modeling diffraction patters, they solved the penicillin structure by 1945. With the help of the scientific service run by L. J. Comrie, they calculated the complete three-dimensional structure on a Hollerith punched card calculator, one of the earliest examples of chrystallographic computing. News of the success gradually leaked out into the crystallographic community: what had begun as a wartime secrecy continued after VE-day as commercial secrecy to protect the interests of the US firms who had undertaken the mass production of the drug, and the penicillin structure was not formally published until 1949 [citing the offered paper no. 2]” (ODNB). Offered here the very offprint inscribed by co-author Barbara Rogers-Low to Dunitz. “Hodgkin's work on penicillin made her internationally famous. Britain’s top scientific body, the Royal Society, elected her to membership in 1947; she was only the third woman to receive this honor.” (Yount, Woman in Science and Math).

[Paper 4:] Inscribed offprint of her Nobel lecture. “Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin was the sole Nobel Laureate in chemistry in 1964, receiving the prize for her work on the determination by X-ray techniques of the structure of several important biochemical compounds, including vitamin B12 and penicillin. She was the third woman [after Marie and Irene Curie], and the first Englishwoman, to receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry”. (James, Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 1901-1992).

[Paper 6:] “With Carlisle she solved the complete three-dimensional structure of cholesterol iodide, including all the bond lengths and angles. This was the first crystallographic study she had pursued to its conclusion, and the first anywhere of such complex organic molecule.” (ODNB).

“Unlike other crystallographers of her generation, Dorothy Hodgkin was not associated with any particular technical breakthrough. She was always at the forefront in the use of computers to carry out crystallographic calculations. However, like others who had cut their teeth on more intuitive approaches, she did not welcome the day when x-ray analysis became automated. Hodgkin’s main contribution was in developing an approach to x-ray analysis that filled the gap between the trial-and-error methods used by W. L. Bragg and Linus Pauling in the 1920s and the brute force methods that became feasible in the late 1950s. This approach required profound insights into chemistry and crystallography but was capable of providing unambiguous structural information about organic molecules too complex for more traditional and indirect methods of analysis…

“In 1964 Hodgkin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry ‘for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances.’ The following year, she was only the second woman ever to be appointed to the Order of Merit, a group of twenty-five distinguished living citizens selected by the British sovereign.” (DSB)

Provenance: All items are from the library of Jack David Dunitz, British chemist and one of the greatest chemical crystallographers. Together with Sydney Brenner, Dorothy Hodgkin, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton he was one of the first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Francis Crick and James Watson.

1. ‘Structure of vitamin B12’. Co-authored with Jennifer Kamper, Maureen Mackay, Jenny Pickworth, Kenneth N. Trueblood, John G. White. Offprint from Nature, Vol. 178, pp. 64-66, July 14, 1956. Original self-wrappers, filing holes, serial number ink stamp, small diagram in ink on first page, numerous annotations to the molecular structure diagram, by Dunitz;

2. ‘The structure of vitamin B12, I. An outline of the crystallographic investigation of vitamin B12’. Co-authored with Jennifer Kamper, June Lindsey, Maureen Mackay, Jenny Pickworth, J. H. Robertson, Clara Brink Shoemaker, J. G. White, R. J. Prosen, K. N. Trueblood Offprint from Proceedings of the Royal Society, A, volume 242, pp. 228-263, 1957. Original printed wrappers, filing holes, serial number ink stamp, inscribed ‘with best wishes Dorothy’;

3. The X-ray crystallographic investigation of the structure of penicillin. Co-authored with C. W. Bunn, B. W. Rogers-Low, A. Turner-Jones. Offprint from The Chemistry of Penicillin, pp. 310-67, 1949. Original printed wrappers, filing holes, serial number ink stamp, inscribed ‘For Jack [Dunitz] with Greetings Barbara [Rogers-Low] ´49’;

4. The X-ray analysis of complicated molecules. Offprint from Les Prix Nobel, 1964, 22 pp., inscribed ‘with greetings & special thanks Dorothy’;

5. X-ray crystallography and sterol structure. Offprint from Vitamins and Hormones, Volume II, pp. 409-61, 1944. Original printed wrappers, serial number ink stamp;

6. The crystal structure of cholesteryl iodide. Co-authored with C. H. Carlisle, D. Crowfoot. Offprint from Proceedings of the Royal Society, A, volume 184, pp. 64-83, 1945. Original printed wrappers, serial number ink stamp;

7. Structure of calciferol. Co-authored with J. D. Dunitz. Offprint from Nature, vol. 162, p. 608, October 16, 1948. Original self-wrappers;

8. X-ray crystallographic studies of compounds of biochemical interest. Offprint from Annual Review of Biochemistry, 1948, pp. 115-46. Original self-wrappers, serial number ink stamp.