Bernal, J. D. (1901-1971), an Irish physicist, pioneered in the analysis of biological substances by X rays. Bernal developed X-ray analysis as a powerful tool in crystallography, the scientific study of crystals. One of his pupils, the British biochemist and crystallographer Dorothy C. Hodgkin, received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1964 for X-ray studies of compounds, such as vitamin B12 and penicillin.
John Desmond Bernal was born on May 10, 1901, in Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland and educated at Cambridge University, England. He became professor at Birkbeck College at the University of London in 1938. His books include The Social Function of Science (1939) and Science in History (1954). He died on Sept. 15, 1971.
