Alan Hodgkin's Birth Card: The 7 of Spades

In the record

Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (5 February 1914 – 20 December 1998) was an English physiologist and biophysicist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles. The birth-card coordinate for February 5 is the 7 of Spades — a calendar position, not a forecast of the 1963 Physiology or Medicine prize.

Nobel Prize record

• 1963 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine — for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane

The 7 of Spades coordinate

Alan Hodgkin's birthday maps to the 7 of Spades (The Questioning Mind). Card Blueprints treats that as a 365-day coordinate: solar value = 55 − (2 × month + day), and the year is unused. It is not a prediction about a Nobel Prize and not a verdict on Alan Hodgkin. The card's own language, quoted as system copy rather than biography: You study the hard pattern until you can name it, then you do the next honest thing.

Live 7 of Spades meaning page

Alan Hodgkin in the public record

Hodgkin was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, on 5 February 1914. He was the oldest of three sons of Quakers George Hodgkin and Mary Wilson Hodgkin. His father was the son of Thomas Hodgkin and had read for the Natural Science Tripos at Cambridge where he had befriended electrophysiologist Keith Lucas. Because of poor eyesight, he was unable to study medicine and eventually ended up working for a bank in Banbury. As members of the Society of Friends, George and Mary opposed the Military Service Act of 1916, which introduced conscription, and had to endure a great deal of abuse from their local community, including an attempt to throw George in one of the town canals. In 1916, George Hodgkin travelled to Armenia as part of an investigation of distress. Moved by the misery and suffering of Armenian refugees he attempted to go back there in 1918 on a route through the Persian Gulf (as the northern route was closed because of the October Revolution in Russia). He died of dysentery in Baghdad on 24 June 1918, just a few weeks after his youngest son, Keith, had been born.

Summarised from the lead section of the Wikipedia article Alan Hodgkin (CC BY-SA 4.0). No biographical facts were written for this page beyond that article.

Where the record meets the 7 of Spades

A card is a calendar coordinate, not a cause. What follows sets one line of the card's own published language beside one sentence of the sourced record, paired by a documented rule. It is a resemblance offered for the reader to weigh — not a claim about Alan Hodgkin, and not a forecast of a Nobel Prize.

Penetrating questions and inquiry

Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (5 February 1914 – 20 December 1998) was an English physiologist and biophysicist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles.

Paired on work, health and mastery — the domain ♠ governs in this system. Markers in the record: medicine.

Also on the record

1. From an early life on, Hodgkin and his brothers were encouraged to explore the country around their home, which instilled in Alan an interest in natural history, particularly ornithology.
2. At the age of 15, he helped Wilfred Backhouse Alexander with surveys of heronries and later, at Gresham's School, he overlapped and spent a lot of time with David Lack.
3. In 1930, he was the winner of a bronze medal in the Public Schools Essay Competition organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
4. Alan started his education at The Downs School where his contemporaries included future scientists Frederick Sanger, Alec Bangham, "neither outstandingly brilliant at school" according to Hodgkin, as well as future artists Lawrence Gowing and Kenneth Rowntree.

Other laureates with this card

• Arthur Kornberg — 1959 Physiology or Medicine
• Claude Cohen-Tannoudji — 1997 Physics
• John E. Walker — 1997 Chemistry
• Joseph E. Murray — 1990 Physiology or Medicine
• Ragnar Frisch — 1969 Economic Sciences
• Richard Zsigmondy — 1925 Chemistry
• Robert Hofstadter — 1961 Physics
• Wangari Maathai — 2004 Peace

FAQ

What is Alan Hodgkin's birth card?

The 7 of Spades. February 5 maps to that card through the public Card Blueprints formula. The year of birth is not used.

Does a birth card predict a Nobel Prize?

No. These pages are coordinates, not fortune-telling. A birth card names a calendar day in a 52-card year. It does not forecast prizes, character, or fate.

Where do Alan Hodgkin's dates come from?

Birth date 1914-02-05 is the Nobel Prize API v2.1 day-precision date, verified against Wikidata P569 (CC0, day precision, Gregorian preferred). The two sources match. Year-only Nobel dates and Nobel↔Wikidata conflicts are dropped, not guessed. Page hooks and evidence come from the Wikipedia REST summary (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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