Dorothy Hodgkin

"Where to begin? She was a very influential scientist in her own right – a protein crystallographer who won the Nobel prize at a time when there were incredibly few women doing high-level science. She had a family, several children, and kept working throughout that time. There’s a lovely passage in the book about her giving a lecture at a conference when she must have been eight months pregnant, under her maiden name, and never realised this could bother people. She was married in 1937, at a time when it was odd enough for pregnant women to be giving talks at a conference, but then to do it under your maiden name and not realise that was even odder! She was very single-minded. “I am a scientist who is a woman, not a woman scientist.” Talking of role models, she was looking at crystallography and a lot of her scientific children and grandchildren are women, so that is also interesting. She did inspire people. And then at the end of her life she was a peace activist, and immensely influential. So she was an amazing scientist, an amazing person in the sense of the breadth of her knowledge and caring, and she was also a female scientist who was a mother. Yet even after her, we still have this impression that you can’t do both. I didn’t set out to have a scientific career. I didn’t set out to have a career at all, I kind of fell into it. I got married during my PhD, my husband was a mathematician, and there came a point when it was easier for me to get a job than for him. He gave up his job so that I didn’t have to follow him, and he became the house husband. And so in our family it was made possible for me to succeed because my husband gave up his career. That is not a choice that many families will make easily. Society makes it really hard on the man. But it is actually a model that is getting commoner. I know quite a few women whose husbands have either given up their career or who have the kind of career – landscape painter, freelance journalist – whereby the women can do the intense job that requires you to be on site, while the husband is at home with the kids and can juggle his own activities around it. But every family has to find its own way of doing it. There is no one way, and it’s hugely important for people to realise you have to do what works for you with your circumstances, with where you are in your career, and with what stage you have your children. It’s a complicated situation but there are many different ways in which it can be solved if you think about it. You’ve got to be creative. There is no single right way of doing it. I know a woman who is fantastically successful, has won lots of prizes, and she took eight years off to have her family and then came back. People think you have to do it in a linear fashion, but it isn’t like that. I never used to try to be a role model. And I never thought they actually mattered. I never had a female role model myself. But for some people it clearly does matter. And I suppose I have somewhat reluctantly been thrust into this position, and I feel I have to embrace it because people tell me it matters to them. I am aware from comments made publicly on my blog and privately to me that women really find it valuable that I am prepared to stand up and say some of the things I think, because they don’t feel able to. It’s a way of empowering them. I feel very strongly, for instance, about telling women that they can have children. To give an example, many years ago I was returning to work after having my second child, and I won some prize. They asked for a photograph of me for them to publish, and I sent a photograph of me and my two children. But the children were cut out, because this was considered to be the wrong message. This was a long time ago, it must be 22 years ago given the age of my daughter. But I think it is absolutely vital that women get the opposite message – that [having children and a scientific career] can be done, that it’s difficult but not impossible, because if young girls believe it’s impossible then it’s another reason for not pursuing science. No one says lawyers can’t do it. No one says journalists can’t do it. There are lots of reasons why it might be difficult, but no one says you can’t be a journalist and have a family. And so it’s vital that we publicise the fact that you can be successful and have a family. I feel very passionate about that. Being a role model – it’s just something that happened. I am reluctant in many ways. I don’t like it. I am a scientist who is a woman, not a woman scientist. But I am in a very fortunate position. As a senior scientist it is harder for people to attack me now. It gives me freedom, and so I think I can say things that need to be said. It needs to be said that you can be a woman, and have a professional science career and a family, as long as you’re prepared to work bloody hard."