Bernal & Hodgkin Begin Protein Crystallography and Possibly Begin Structural Molecular Biology

In 1934 British crystallographer, polymath and writer John Desmond Bernal at the University of London, and British chemist and crystallographer Dorothy Crowfoot (Hodgkin), took the first X-ray photograph of a protein structure—crystalline pepsin. They showed that crystals of pepsin give an X-ray diffaction pattern, beginning protein crystallography. This may also be the beginning of structural molecular biology.

Bernal & Crowfoot, "X-Ray Photographs of Crystalline Pepsin," Nature 133 (1934) 794-95.