The Bank of England is to make a new 拢50 note. In addition to the queen, the bank wants to include a scientist and is .
I鈥檇 like to make the case for Nobel prizewinning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin. An amazing scientist, undoubtedly, but also an adept politician, and an icon for many women in science. Plus her lifelong obsession with patterns offers a lot for the bank鈥檚 designers to play with too.
Hodgkin is the only British woman to have won a Nobel prize for science. She was a pioneer in the field of X-ray crystallography, advancing our understanding of what molecules look like, including vitamin B12 and insulin. And yet, when the Nobel prize for chemistry was announced in 1964, some British newspapers went with headlines that a 鈥淏ritish wife鈥� had won a Nobel.
Advertisement
Hodgkin used some of the Nobel prize money to establish a nursery at Somerville College at the University of Oxford, which is still running today. She was the first woman at the university to receive paid maternity leave. She was reluctant to take it, so we should probably credit college administrators for pushing it through.
Inspiring tutor
Hodgkin also taught Margaret Thatcher, when the former prime minister was an undergraduate in the 1940s. Thatcher greatly admired Hodgkin, inspired by a woman with children who surpassed men at the top of her field. When Hodgkin visited Thatcher in 1983 at her country residence to lobby on university funding and nuclear disarmament, Thatcher reportedly revised in advance, wanting to impress her old tutor.
But Hodgkin and Thatcher鈥檚 politics were strikingly different. Hodgkin was banned from entering the US in the 1950s due to her socialist connections, subsequently allowed to visit only with a CIA waiver. She accepted the Lenin Peace Prize in 1987, supported the miners strikes, was affiliated with the radical science movement and she spoke against apartheid. Not the sort of person you鈥檇 expect Thatcher to have kept a portrait of by her desk at Downing Street.
Visually, Hodgkin鈥檚 work offers the bank鈥檚 designers a lot. Her obsession with patterns grew into work exploring the structures of molecules. On an archaeological dig with her family in Jordan in the 1920s, she made sketches of Byzantine mosaics which are still held at Yale.
Hodgkin is not the only good choice. The Bank of England鈥檚 rules for nomination say the scientist has to be real, dead, have shaped Britain in some way, and 鈥渋nspire people, not divide them鈥� 鈥� criteria that many scientists meet.
Science minister Sam Gyimah has already nominated Ada Lovelace and Rosalind Franklin, as well as Dorothy Hodgkin. Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking are also strong favourites. With steam engine pioneers James Watt and Matthew Boulton currently on the 拢50, it鈥檚 tempting to replace them with someone from the history of climate change, like John Tyndall. Still, after all the fuss over Jane Austen on the 拢10 note and women in STEM riding high as a political issue, I suspect it鈥檒l go to a woman.
Join me in team Hodgkin. She is an icon for Thatcherites and CNDers alike. She invites us to consider issues of women in science, and the role of scientists in politics too. The selection process will be a bunfight because it always is, but I鈥檇 be very happy to see Hodgkin win.
