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History of Science Museum

Model of the Structure of Penicillin, by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Oxford, c.1945

Inventory Number 17631


Acknowledgement: © History of Science Museum, University of Oxford, inv.17631

Subject
Medicine
Item type
Object
Provenance
Presumably part of the collection of penicillin apparatus transferred to the Museum from the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford, in 1947.
Object type
Molecular model
Dimensions
Height: 235mm Width: 314mm Depth: 314mm
Inventory No
17631
Accession Number
1948-8/part

Description

The model gives a three dimensional map of part of one of the crystal salts of penicillin. The contours are lines of electron density and show the positions of individual atoms in the structure. The diagram shows two schematic views of the structure.

Based on X-ray crystallography work by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and Barbara Low (Oxford) and C.W. Bunn and A. Turner-Jones (I.C.I. Alkali Division, Northwich).