 In 1921 Hodgkin's father entered her in the Sir John Leman Grammar School in Beccles England, where she was one of two girls allowed to study chemistry.Only once, when she was 13, did she make an extended visit to her parents, then living in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where her father was Principal of Gordon College.When she was 14, her distant cousin, the chemist Charles Harington (later Sir Charles), recommended D. S. Parsons' "Fundamentals of Biochemistry".