Dorothy Maud Wrinch
Encyclopedia
Dorothy Maud Wrinch was a mathematician
and biochemical theorist best known for her attempt to deduce protein
structure using mathematical principles.
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.
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."
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. However, experimental work by Irving Langmuir
done in collaboration with Wrinch to validate her ideas catalyzed the principle of the Hydrophobic effect
being the driving force for protein folding
.
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.
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.
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."
For a list of Wrinch's degrees see
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
and biochemical theorist best known for her attempt to deduce protein
Protein
Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
structure using mathematical principles.
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
Surbiton
Surbiton, a suburban area of London in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, is situated next to the River Thames, with a mixture of Art-Deco courts, more recent residential blocks and grand, spacious 19th century townhouses blending into a sea of semi-detached 20th century housing estates...
, near London. She attended Surbiton High School
Surbiton High School
Surbiton High School is a private school in Surbiton in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Greater London, England. It was founded in 1884 by a group of Anglican clergymen who instituted the Church Schools Company...
and in 1913 entered Girton College
Girton College, Cambridge
Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. It was England's first residential women's college, established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon. The full college status was only received in 1948 and marked the official admittance of women to the...
, University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
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
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
. 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
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
Tractatus in England.
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
Harold Jeffreys
Sir Harold Jeffreys, FRS was a mathematician, statistician, geophysicist, and astronomer. His seminal book Theory of Probability, which first appeared in 1939, played an important role in the revival of the Bayesian view of probability.-Biography:Jeffreys was born in Fatfield, Washington, County...
on scientific method; these formed the basis of his 1931 book Scientific Inference. In the Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
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."
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
Joseph Needham
Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA , also known as Li Yuese , was a British scientist, historian and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941, and as a fellow of the British...
, C. H. Waddington, J. D. Bernal
J. D. Bernal
John Desmond Bernal FRS was one of Britain’s best known and most controversial scientists, called "Sage" by his friends, and known for pioneering X-ray crystallography in molecular biology.-Origin and education:His family was Irish, of mixed Italian and Spanish/Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin...
and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
Dorothy Mary Hodgkin OM, FRS , née Crowfoot, was a British chemist, credited with the development of protein crystallography....
. From then on Wrinch could be described as a theoretical biologist. She developed a model of protein structure, which she called the "cyclol
Cyclol
The cyclol hypothesis is the first structural model of a folded, globular protein. It was developed by Dorothy Wrinch in the late 1930s, and was based on three assumptions. Firstly, the hypothesis assumes that two peptide groups can be crosslinked by a cyclol reaction ; these crosslinks are...
" structure. The model generated considerable controversy and was attacked by the chemist Linus Pauling
Linus Pauling
Linus Carl Pauling was an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century...
. 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. However, experimental work by Irving Langmuir
Irving Langmuir
Irving Langmuir was an American chemist and physicist. His most noted publication was the famous 1919 article "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules" in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel's chemical bonding theory, he outlined his...
done in collaboration with Wrinch to validate her ideas catalyzed the principle of the Hydrophobic effect
Hydrophobic effect
The hydrophobic effect is the observed tendency of nonpolar substances to aggregate in aqueous solution and exclude water molecules. The name, literally meaning "water-fearing," describes the segregation and apparent repulsion between water and nonpolar substances...
being the driving force for protein folding
Protein folding
Protein folding is the process by which a protein structure assumes its functional shape or conformation. It is the physical process by which a polypeptide folds into its characteristic and functional three-dimensional structure from random coil....
.
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
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
, 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.
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
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
. He arranged a visiting professorship at three small Massachusetts colleges, Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
, Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
, and Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was the first member of the Seven Sisters colleges, and served as a model for some of the others...
. From 1942 until she retired in 1971 Wrinch held research positions at Smith.
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
- "Selected papers of Dorothy Wrinch, from the Sophia Smith Collection," in "Structures of Matter and Patterns in Science, inspired by the work and life of Dorothy Wrinch, 1894-1976, The Proceedings of a Symposium held at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts September 28–30, 1977, Schenkman Publishing Company, 1980.
Discussions
- D. Crowfoot Hodgkin & 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, P. G. Abir-Am & D. Outram (Eds), 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, February 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, Interpreting Probability: Controversies and Developments in the Early Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2002. (Chapter 4 describes the Wrinch-Jeffreys collaboration.)
- Marjorie Senechal, "A Prophet without Honor: Dorothy Wrinch, Scientist, 1894-1976," Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Vol. 68 (1977), 18-23.
- Charles TanfordCharles TanfordCharles Tanford was an author and one of the preeminent protein chemists of his generation. He died in York, England on October 1, 2009.-Life:Charles was born in Halle, Germany in 1921 to Majer and Charlotte Tannenbaum...
& Jacqueline Reynolds, Nature's Robots: A History of Proteins, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001. (Chapters 10 and 12 discuss Wrinch's cyclol theory.) - Patrick Coffey, Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry, Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-532134-0 (Prologue, Chapter 9, and the Epilogue discuss Wrinch).
External links
- "Dorothy Wrinch", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott CollegeAgnes Scott CollegeAgnes Scott College is a private undergraduate college in the United States. Agnes Scott's campus lies in downtown Decatur, Georgia, nestled inside the perimeter of the bustling metro-Atlanta area....
- 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