Molecular model showing the structure of insulin

Made:: 1967 in England

maker:: Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin

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This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Model, one of two, made by Dorothy M. Crowfoot Hodgkin c.1967, to show the structure of 2 zinc pig insulin crystals at a resolution of 2.8A

In 1935, Dorothy M Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-94), a British chemist and crystallographer, published the first X-ray photograph of insulin. Insulin is produced by the pancreas to break down sugars in the body. But Hodgkin and her team were unable to determine the 3-D structure of insulin until 1969, when this model was made. The larger metal balls in the model represent zinc, which was introduced chemically into the protein to decode the rest.

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Science Museum: Making the Modern World Gallery

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Details

Category:: Biotechnology

Object Number:: 1991-286/1

Materials:: copper alloy, plastic, steel

type:: molecular model

taxonomy:

visual and verbal communication
model - representation

credit:: Prof. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

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