Dorothy Maud Wrinch (September 12, 1894 - February 11, 1976; married names Nicholson, Glaser) was a mathematician and biochemical theorist best known for her attempt to explain protein structure using mathematical principles. Portal:Currentevents September 12 is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years). ... 1894 (MDCCCXCIV) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... February 11 is the 42nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Dorothy Wrinch was born in Rosario, Argentina, the daughter of Hugh Edward Hart Wrinch, an engineer, and Ada Souter. The family returned to England and Dorothy grew up in Surbiton, near London. She attended Surbiton High School and in 1913 entered Girton College, University of Cambridge to read mathematics. She graduated in 1916 as a wrangler. She stayed for a fourth year taking the moral sciences tripos so that she could study symbolic logic with Bertrand Russell. When Russell was in prison for his anti-war activities Wrinch acted as his unpaid research assistant and personal secretary. Later when Russell went to China he left her with the task of arranging the publication of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in England. This article or section should be merged with Rosario Rosario is a city in eastern Argentina, in Santa Fe Province, a port on the Paraná River. ... Surbiton is a suburban area of London situated in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. ... Surbiton High School is a school in Surbiton in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, London, England. ... Full name Girton College Motto - Named after Girton Village Previous names The College for Women (1869), Girton College (1872) Established 1869 Sister College Somerville College Mistress Dame Marylin Strathern Location Huntingdon Road Undergraduates 503 Graduates 201 Homepage Boatclub Girton College lies on the extremity of Cambridge Girton College was established... The University of Cambridge, located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world, with a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ... At the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, a wrangler is a student who has completed the third year (called Part II) of the Mathematical Tripos with first-class honours. ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, and mathematician, working mostly in the 20th century. ... Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (IPA: ) (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who contributed several ground-breaking works to contemporary philosophy, primarily on the foundations of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. ...

Wrinch's career divides into two periods. Between 1918 and 1932 she published 20 papers on pure and applied mathematics and 16 on scientific methodology and on the philosophy of science. Not surprisingly, Russell had a strong influence on her philosophical work. She also wrote a number of papers with Harold Jeffreys on scientific method; these formed the basis of his 1931 book Scientific Inference. In the Nature obituary Jeffreys wrote, "I should like to put on record my appreciation of the substantial contribution she made to [our joint] work, which is the basis of all my later work on scientific inference." Sir Harold Jeffreys (22 April 1891 – 18 March 1989) was a mathematician, statistician, geophysicist, and astronomer. ...

In 1932 Wrinch was one of founders of the Biotheoretical Gathering, an inter-disciplinary group that sought to explain life by discovering how proteins work. Also involved were Joseph Needham, C. H. Waddington, J. D. Bernal and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. From then on Wrinch could be described as a theoretical biologist. She developed a model of protein structure, which she called the "cyclol" structure. The model generated considerable controversy and was attacked by the chemist Linus Pauling. In these debates Wrinch's lack of training in chemistry was a great weakness. By 1939, evidence had accumulated that the model was wrong but Wrinch continued working on it. Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (December 9, 1900 – March 24, 1995) was a British biochemist and pre-eminent authority on the history of Chinese science. ... Conrad Hal Waddington (1905 — 1975), known to his friends as Wad, was a developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher. ... John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) was an Irish-born scientist (from Nenagh, County Tipperary), known for pioneering X-ray crystallography. ... Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, OM , FRS (12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was a British founder of protein crystallography. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... Linus Carl Pauling (February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994) was an American quantum chemist and biochemist. ...

Wrinch was a productive researcher who accumulated academic distinctions, e.g., in 1929 she was the first woman to receive an Oxford DSc. Nevertheless, her professional position was always insecure. In 1918 she was appointed to a lectureship in mathematics at University College London but after 2 years she returned to Girton as a research fellow. In 1922 she married the mathematical physicist John William Nicholson. Nicholson was a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Wrinch moved to Oxford and to a succession of temporary jobs for the next 16 years. The couple had one child, Pamela, born in 1927. Wrinch's book on parenthood, dedicated to Russell, was a venture into sociology rather than a manual of child-care. Nicholson's mental health deteriorated in the late 1920s, and in 1930 he was certified as mentally ill and confined. In 1937 Wrinch was granted a divorce on grounds of her husband's insanity. Full name Balliol College Motto - Named after John de Balliol Previous names - Established 1263 Sister College St Johns College, Cambridge Master Andrew Graham (academic) Location Broad Street Undergraduates 403 Graduates 228 Homepage Boatclub Balliol College, founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford...

In 1939 Wrinch and her daughter moved to the United States. In 1941 she married Otto Charles Glaser, chairman of the biology department and vice-president of Amherst College. He arranged a visiting professorship at three small Massachusetts colleges, Amherst College, Smith College, and Mount Holyoke College. From 1942 until she retired in 1971 Wrinch held research positions at Smith. Amherst College is an elite independent liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. It is the third oldest college in Massachusetts. ... Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, is the largest womens college in the United States[citation needed]. The college remains strongly committed to the education of women at the undergraduate level, but Smith admits both men and women as graduate students. ... Mount Holyoke College, (founded as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary 8 November 1837), is a liberal arts womens college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. ...

Crowfoot Hodgkin wrote in Wrinch's obituary that she was "a brilliant and controversial figure who played a part in the beginnings of much of present research in molecular biology." On a more personal level, Crowfoot Hodgkin wrote, "I like to think of her as she was when I first knew her, gay, enthusiastic and adventurous, courageous in face of much misfortune and very kind."

Some Works of D. M. Wrinch

• “On Some Aspects of the Theory of Probability,” Philosophical Magazine, 38, (1919), 715-731. (with Harold Jeffreys)
• The Retreat from Parenthood London : K. Paul, Trench, Trübner 1930 (as Jean Ayling)
• Fourier transforms and structure factors; American Society for X-Ray and Electron Diffraction. 1946
• Chemical aspects of the structure of small peptides; an introduction. 1960.
• Chemical aspects of polypeptide chain structures and the cyclol theory 1965.
• List of Wrinch's philosophy publications

Discussions

• D. Crowfoot Hodgkin and H. Jeffreys, Obituary Nature, 260 (1976), p. 564
• P. G. Abir-Am Synergy or Clash: Disciplinary and Marital Strategies in the Career of Mathematical Biologist Dorothy Wrinch. In Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives, Women in Science 1789-1979 Eds. P. G. Abir-Am & D. Outram; Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1987; pp 239-280.
• Mary R. S. Creese, ‘Wrinch , Dorothy Maud (1894-1976)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 11 July 2005.
• Charles W. Carey, Jr.. "Wrinch, Dorothy Maud"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Accessed 11 July 2005.
• John Jones, "Nicholson, John William (1881-1955)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 11 July 2005.
• David Howie (2002) Interpreting Probability: Controversies and Developments in the Early Twentieth Century, New York, Cambridge University Press. (Chapter 4 describes the Wrinch-Jeffreys collaboration.)
• Charles Tanford, Jacqueline Reynolds (2001) Nature's Robots: A History of Proteins,Oxford, Oxford University Press. (Chapters 10 and 12 discuss Wrinch's cyclol theory.)

External links

• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Dorothy Maud Wrinch". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
• Journal of Chemical Education: Dorothy Maud Wrinch
• SJSU Virtual Museum: Dorothy Wrinch (has photograph)
• Science World: Linus Pauling
• Photograph of group including Wrinch from 1918 at the National Portrait Gallery

For a list of Wrinch's degrees see

• Dorothy Wrinch on Mathematical Women in the British Isles, 1878-1940