University of York’s tribute to insulin pioneer
Posted on 4 February 2005
The £9 million building is part of a major investment in the University’s Department of Chemistry by the Science Research Investment Fund (SRIF) and will be formally opened by the chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Professor Dame Julia Higgins, FRS.Later this year, a further £3.3 million from SRIF will fund a new centre for magnetic resonance in the department further consolidating its status as a centre for outstanding research and teaching. The latest addition to the Department of Chemistry’s suite of laboratories will be named after Nobel Prize winner, Professor Dorothy Hodgkin, one of the UK’s outstanding scientists of the 20th century, who completed her pioneering research on the molecular structure of insulin in York.
The new building will house a total of eight research groups and its focal point is a central laboratory housing a battery of mass spectrometers. They are being used by groups specialising in analytical chemistry, headed by Professor Jane Thomas-Oates, Professor David Goodall, Dr Lucy Carpenter and Dr Brendan Keely, and synthetic chemistry teams led by Professor Richard Taylor, Dr Peter O’Brien, Dr Andy Parsons and Dr Dave Smith.
The research groups’ work is hugely varied and includes analysis of the chemistry of the atmosphere and metal poisons in sheep to the study of the synthesis of natural products for use in the development of new antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs.
Naming the new building marks an enduring link between Professor Hodgkin and York. It has been constructed on the site of the laboratory where, in her retirement in the 1970s and 1980s, Professor Hodgkin wrote up the findings of a total of more than 30 years’ research into insulin structures carried out principally in Oxford.
The Chemistry building has many wonderful features, but its main strength is the people who work there – people who, like Dorothy Hodgkin, will make a real difference to society
Professor Brian Cantor
Professor Hodgkin, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964, visited the University of York frequently between 1976 and 1988 at the invitation of academics Guy and Eleanor Dodson, of the Department of Chemistry, who had worked with her on insulin research at Oxford.
Professor Hodgkin, who died in 1994, was a familiar sight in the Chemistry Department’s old D block which was demolished to make way for the building which now bears her name. She lectured at York and was awarded an honorary degree by the University.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of York, Professor Brian Cantor, said: "The Chemistry building has many wonderful features, but its main strength is the people who work there – people who, like Dorothy Hodgkin, will make a real difference to society.
"It is a signal of our strong support for the Department and its achievements in what is a challenging period for university science departments in the UK."
The head of the Department of Chemistry, Professor Paul Walton, said: "Research on insulin structures continues to this day in the Department of Chemistry. Dorothy Hodgkin’s name on this new building serves as both a testament to her vision and an incentive to those who follow to strive to emulate her achievements."
Notes to editors:
- The Department of Chemistry at the University of York has an excellent reputation for teaching and research. In the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise the department was awarded a 5 rating. It is led by Royal Society of Chemistry prize-winners in all three branches of physical, organic and inorganic chemistry. It has 46 full-time members of staff, more than 380 undergraduate students, 150 graduates and 90 research fellows.
- Professor Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994), carried out pioneering work on the structures of antibiotics, vitamins and proteins, including penicillin, Vitamin B12, used in the treatment of pernicious anaemia, and insulin using X-ray diffraction techniques. Many of the methods for solving complex crystal structures were developed taking advantage of digital computers from the earliest days and the work provided a basis for much of the present day molecular structure driven molecular biology and medicinal chemistry. Educated at Somerville College, Oxford, she spent most of her career in Oxford with a brief interlude in Cambridge in the early 1930s. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1964 and the Order of Merit a year later.