Dorothy Hodgkin by SATRO guest blogger John Faulkner

Many people will have been prescribed antibiotics to cure a nasty infection or even to save their lives. Behind the development of modern medicines like these is Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin who remains the only British woman to win a Nobel Prize in science. She won the 1964 chemistry prize outright for her techniques to find the atomic structure of biochemicals. Among her discoveries were the molecular structures of Penicillin (1945), Vitamin B12 (1955) and Insulin (1969). Knowing biochemical structure allows chemists to understand how drugs work. Microscopes cannot magnify to atomic level so the technique that she used was X-Ray Crystallography.

If you shine a laser through a fine lattice onto a screen, instead of a blurred shadow, a sharp diffraction pattern can be formed. It is possible to find out the shape of the lattice by using advanced mathematics along with the diffraction pattern measurements and the laser frequency. More energetic X-Ray's beamed through solids can create a diffraction pattern in a similar way. By focussing X-Rays through a crystal's lattice of atoms to get a diffraction pattern the molecular structure can be calculated. This was virtually impossible for the molecules that build living organisms but Dorothy Hodgkin was able to grow, mount the crystals and reveal their 3D atomic structure. With the relatively primitive equipment of the time, finding each structure took many years of science and engineering effort.

She was a mother with three children and worked as a scientist well into her eighties. Besides her Nobel Prize, Awards and Fellowships in 1965 she received the Order of Merit, given personally by the Queen and limited to only 24 living British Commonwealth citizens. Transforming the lives of the sick Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was the first woman to be conferred this honour since Florence Nightingale.

- John Faulkner

Marie Curie by guest blogger John Faulkner

Born in 1864 Marie Curie, one of the great pioneering scientists, remains the only person to win Nobel prizes in both Physics and Chemistry. She initiated the theory of radioactivity and discovered two new elements. With her husband Pierre, also a Nobel Prize laureate, they designed techniques to analyse radioactive uranium minerals that she suspected contained new elements, discovering Radium and Polonium. Their equipment included an ionisation chamber to convert the mineral's radiation to electric charge and an electrometer to measure the tiny currents generated. Isolation of the first element, Radium, took many years of chemical processing. Following their discoveries Marie went on to demonstrate the benefits of radiotherapy to treat cancer. During WW1 she personally deployed field X-Ray machines and later founded the Curie Institutes for medical research in Paris and Warsaw. However, the dangers of radiation exposure were not known, she kept a jar of luminous Radium by her bedside as a nightlight and radioactive samples in her pocket. She died at the age of 66 from a rare form of anaemia it is believed resulted from overexposure to X-Rays from her life saving war work. It took until the 1980's to decontaminate her laboratory sufficiently to open it as a museum!

Did you know that you may have a device based on Marie Curie's research equipment in your house? It is the ionising Smoke Detector. Smoke particles, which are electrically charged, entering the detectors' ionisation chamber will trigger the alarm.

The pioneering work of Marie Curie and her husband Pierre continue to have a profound affect on our world today, particularly in medical research and treatment of cancer. You may also recognise the daffodil emblem for the Marie Curie appeal for cancer care.

- John Faulkner

John Faulkner, SATRO Volunteer on Paul Dirac, Theoretical Physicist

Ask any physicist today about who they rate as next best British scientist to Newton and the answer might easily be Paul Dirac. Dirac was a theoretical physicist and in 1928 he derived the 'Dirac Equation'. His genius was to construct a single equation that described electron behaviour in all conditions - from the weird world of quantum mechanics to the light speeds of Einstein's special theory of relativity. Put simply the behaviour of every electron that had ever existed in the universe! The power of the equation went further and predicted the existence of a new unsuspected type of matter called antimatter. At the age of 31 Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics. The first anti-matter to be discovered was the anti-electron, or positron, in 1934. Our modern world of electronic wonders would not exist without reference to this one glorious piece of mathematical genius. Knowledge of the positron has enabled the invention of latest non-invasive medical scanners. The Dirac Equation is described in his ground breaking book The Principles of Quantum Mechanics.

Dirac was born in Bristol in 1902 and died in Florida in 1984. As a formidable contributor to quantum theory and one of the world's most respected scientists he held a glittering array of awards and professorships in Britain and the USA. Although happily married he was cripplingly quiet and shy, possibly suffering from autism. This may explain why he is not well known outside the world of physics.

His memorial can be found in a corner of Westminster Abbey - the Dirac Equation carved in stone.

John Faulkner, SATRO Volunteer on Dame Jocelyn Bell

In July 1967 Ph.D research student Jocelyn Bell made one of the great astronomical discoveries of the 20th century. She worked in the astronomy department at Cambridge University on a team researching quasars. Quasars were a newly discovered high energy radio source to astronomy. Her role was to help build a 4 acre wide antenna matrix radio telescope. Tiny anomalies in signal data from the telescope, dismissed as man-made, grabbed her attention. Determined to find the source she proved that they were not only extra-terrestrial but an entirely new type of star - a pulsar. Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, a result from the cataclysmic compression forces of the supernova from when an unstable star explodes.

The 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics included the discovery of pulsars but controversially Jocelyn Bell was not conferred with a joint award  even though she was a co-author of the associated scientific paper. She accepted this gracefully and went on to become one of our top scientists. With an array of scientific awards from around the world Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been named one the top 100 most influential women in the UK.

She had been inspired to go into physics by her teacher at school. During the 1960's it was unusual for women to have a career in physics and she needed resolve to be successful in what was a male dominated environment.

Her discovery was not just luck and required a deep understanding of astrophysics and hard work. As Louis Pasteur once said "chance favours the prepared mind".

Take heart if you struggle with exams, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS PRSE FRAS did not pass her 11+!