UK (1996) Women of achievement: Dorothy Hodgkins (1910-1994) and Vitamin B12.

Dorothy Hodgkins was a British biochemist and crystallographer who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry for "her determination by x-ray techniques of the structures of biologically important 
molecules." She obtained degrees from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Using the first electronic
computer she confirmed the structure of vitamin B12 which helped scientists to understand how the 
human body uses B12 to build red blood cells.
Vitamin B12 is essential for synthesis of blood cells and formation of myelin in the nervous system.
Vitamin B12 deficiency causes megaloblastic anaemia and subacute combined degeneration of the 
spinal cord. In the eye, its deficiency causes flame haemorrhages and optic atrophy.