 However, even the smallest proteins have over 1000 atoms, which makes determining their structure far more complex.In 1934, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin had taken crystallographic data on the structure of the small protein, insulin, although the structure of that and other proteins were not solved until the late 1960s.However, pioneering X-ray fiber diffraction data had been collected in the early 1930s for many natural fibrous proteins such as wool and hair by William Astbury, who proposed rudimentary models of secondary structure elements such as the alpha helix and the beta sheet.