The catalogue of the additional papers of Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994), chemist and x-ray crystallographer, has been made available online for the first time. The papers were catalogued by the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists in 2004 but the paper catalogue was only available to researchers in the Special Collections Reading Room at the Bodleian Library. As part of the ‘Saving Oxford Medicine’ project, the catalogue has now been converted into an xml file and mounted online, making it much more accessible to researchers.
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| Dorothy Hodgkin |
The additional papers cover all aspects of Hodgkin’s life but are particularly rich in biographical material and family correspondence, and give an insight into her wide-ranging interests. There is extensive correspondence with her husband, Thomas, who was often absent from the family home, due to his work commitments. Hodgkin aimed to write to him every day, despite her heavy workload and busy family life and the letters give a personal view of her scientific work, her political interests and her domestic life.
The catalogue can now be viewed online at:
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/modern/hodgkin/hodgkin-adds.html
Video interviews with Dorothy Hodgkin can be viewed online through the Web of Stories website: http://www.webofstories.com/play/17310?srId=223575&o=S
Very good to see this catalogue online. I read most of these papers in the mid-1990s, many of them in a freezing attic until they were moved to the Bodleian. Great that future scholars will have all the search tools they need to learn more about this extraordinary woman, still the only female British scientist to win a Nobel prize.