Dorothy Hodgkin by Kristin Thiel

Author:Kristin Thiel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC

Polly Porter

Mary “Polly” Porter worked during Hodgkin’s time. She had been assistant to Henry Alexander Miers, the man who transformed Oxford University’s mineralogy department into a crystallography lab in the late 1800s. Porter had a surprisingly long effect on X-ray crystallography and became an inspiration to Hodgkin.

Porter’s influence was surprising in large part because she left school before she was fifteen. Her parents didn’t think she needed an education, but they couldn’t stop her from learning on her own. She did such a good job with her self-designed study that she ended up unintentionally impressing Miers. He took notice of her regular visits to the Oxford Museum’s collection of antique Italian marbles and asked if she could translate the catalog from Italian. She could.

Despite such a well-known academic being in their daughter’s corner, Porter’s parents refused to let her attend Oxford. That attitude continued to have little actual effect on her life. She continued to be offered, and to happily take, research opportunities not only in England but also in the United States and Germany, and eventually she found herself working in X-ray crystallography. Miers simply asked her if she would like to try growing some crystals. Encouragement is an important component to someone’s education being a success. Porter published in respected journals and coedited the three-volume Barker Index of Crystals.

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