Cecily Darwin Littleton (15 November 1926 – 14 April 2022) was a British X-ray crystallographer and horticulturalist. She worked alongside

Dorothy Hodgkin Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was a Nobel Prize-winning British chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential fo ...

on the identification of the crystal structure of biomolecules.

Early life and education

Littleton was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

. She was the great-granddaughter of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

. Her father was

Charles Galton Darwin Sir Charles Galton Darwin (19 December 1887 – 31 December 1962) was an English physicist who served as director of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) during the Second World War. He was a son of the mathematician George Howard Darwin an ...

and her mother was a mathematician, Katharine Pember Darwin. Her father worked on

atomic theory Atomic theory is the scientific theory that matter is composed of particles called atoms. Atomic theory traces its origins to an ancient philosophical tradition known as atomism. According to this idea, if one were to take a lump of matter a ...

and

X-ray diffraction X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles ...

, and was a member of the

Darwin–Wedgwood family The Darwin–Wedgwood family are members of two connected families, each noted for particular prominent 18th-century figures: Erasmus Darwin, a physician and natural philosopher, and Josiah Wedgwood, a noted potter and founder of the eponymous ...

. She attended

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

, where she studied chemistry and graduated in 1949. At Oxford, she worked alongside

. Together they worked on the structure of biomolecules, including nitrosobenzenes.

Research and career

Littleton moved to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

and worked alongside

Arthur Lindo Patterson Arthur Lindo Patterson (23 July 1902, Nelson, New Zealand - 6 November 1966, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was a pioneering British X-ray crystallographer. Patterson was born to British parents in New Zealand in 1902. Shortly afterwards the famil ...

at the

Fox Chase Cancer Center Fox Chase Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center research facility and hospital located in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The main facilities of the center are loca ...

. She developed the statistical analysis techniques to model crystal structures. She also worked at

Haverford College Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...

, where she studied stellar evolution. Like her great-grandfather, Littleton travelled to the

Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands (Spanish: , , ) are an archipelago of volcanic islands. They are distributed on each side of the equator in the Pacific Ocean, surrounding the centre of the Western Hemisphere, and are part of the Republic of Ecuador ...

. In 1989, she donated a chair belonging to

to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

Selected publications

* *

Personal life

Littleton met musician John Littleton, who would later become her husband, at a

New Year's Eve In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester's Day in many countries, is the evening or the entire day of the last day of the year, on 31 December. The last day of the year is commonly referred to ...

party. Together they had four children. He died in 2009. She trained in horticulture in the 1980s. Littleton died on 14 April 2022, of a cardiac arrest.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Littleton, Cecily 1926 births 2022 deaths British crystallographers British horticulturists Women horticulturists and gardeners 20th-century British scientists 20th-century British women scientists Scientists from Edinburgh Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford Haverford College Fox Chase Cancer Center people Darwin–Wedgwood family