Georgina Ferry | Britannica

Georgina Ferry

Contributor

Connect with Georgina Ferry

BIOGRAPHY

Science writer. Author of Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life; The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome (with John Sulston); A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the World's First Office Computer; and Max Perutz and the Secret of Life.

Primary Contributions (2)

Articles

Dorothy Hodgkin

Dorothy Hodgkin was an English chemist whose determination of the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12 brought her the 1964 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Dorothy Crowfoot was the eldest of four sisters whose parents, John and Grace Mary Crowfoot, worked in North Africa and the Middle East in…

Women in Science

Publications (4)

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Patterns, Proteins and Peace: A Life in Science (September 2014)

By Georgina Ferry

Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994) was renowned for her medically-important work on penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin. Fully engaged with the political and social currents of her time, she participated in some of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century: women's education; the globalisation of science; the rise and fall of communism; and international peace movements. A wife, mother and grandmother, she cared deeply about the wellbeing of individuals in all cultures.

Georgina Ferry's biography...

The Common Thread (December 2009)

By Georgina Ferry, John Sulston

John Sulston was director of the Sanger Centre in Cambridge from 1993 to 2000. There he led the British arm of the international team selected to map the entire human DNA sequence, a feat that was pulled off in record time by an extraordinary collaboration of scientists. Despite innumerable setbacks and challenges from outside competitors the ultimate success of the project can be attributed in large part to John Sulston's own determination, passion and scientific excellence.

In this personal...

Max Perutz and the Secret of Life (2008)

By Georgina Ferry

In this book, Georgina Ferry tells the extraordinary story of the father of molecular biology, Max Perutz, whose famous research team uncovered the structure of DNA.

A Computer Called Leo : Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer (2003)

By Georgina Ferry

This is the eccentric story of one of the most bizarre marriages in the history of British business: the invention of the world's first office computer and the Lyons tea shop. The Lyons tea shops were one of the great British institutions, providing a cup of tea and a penny bun through the depression, the war, austerity and on into the 1960s and 1970s. Yet Lyons also has a more surprising claim to history. In the 1930s John Simmons, a young graduate in charge of the clerks' offices that totalled...