Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. In her final year, she studied X-ray crystallography under Dorothy Hodgkin, who later won the Nobel Prize. She was already interested in politics, and became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. Roberts read political works such as Friedrich von Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" (1944), which said economic intervention by government was wrong, because it gave too much power to the state. After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.