Wrinch

The later work of Dorothy Maud Wrinch95 impinged directly on that of Bernal and Crowfoot, and for this reason her biography is included here even though she was not a member of the 

In 1922, Wrinch married John William Nicholson, Director of Studies in Physics and Mathematics at Balliol College, Oxford and she moved to Oxford in 1923, becoming tutor in mathematics to the five women s colleges of the university. The position was annually renewed until 1927, when it finally became a long-term appointment. 

Wrinch was a prolific and versatile scientist. Between 1918 and 1932, she published 16 papers on scientific methodology and the philosophy of science, together with 20 papers on aspects of pure and applied mathematics. Though this versatility can be looked upon as the mark of a true scholar, it also had its negative aspects, as Pnina Abir-Am has pointed out  

Wrinch had a child, Pamela, in 1927, and her experiences of combining academic duties with marriage and motherhood led to her writing The Retreat from Parenthood under the pseudonym of J. Ayling.97 Unfortunately, her life was to be suddenly changed by the permanent institutionalisation of her husband as a result of alcoholism in 1930. 

The sudden reduction in income, in addition to posing a major financial problem, caused Wrinch to reassess her direction. At this point in time, biological architecture had begun to fascinate her — the application of mathematical topological techniques to the interpretation of biological molecular structures. Wrinch herself commented  

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She [Wrinch] was a friend of ours, and as a mathematician was very anxious to become acquainted with biology and biochemistry and to contribute to the problems on which we were working. .. We were friends of hers, and had helped to develop her theories, but we did not believe in them, and that was our trouble.101... 

Gradually and relentlessly, after the war, chemical and crystallographic work proved that protein molecules did not have the cyclol structure. Yet many of Dorothy Wrinch s geometrical instincts and deductions were, in general terms, correct. 

Ayling, J. [Wrinch, D.] (1930). The Retreat from Parenthood. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner Co., London. 

Martin, R. B. (1987). Dorothy Wrinch and the structure of proteins. Journal of Chemical Education 64 1069. 

Wrinch, D. (1946). Fourier Transforms and Structure Factors. American Society for X-ray and Electron Diffraction, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Dorothy Wrinch (nght) shows a model of her cydol structure to two colleagues. Pauling was skeptical of her work and published a paper demolishing Wrinch s arguments. 

To put an end to what he saw as a distraction from more valuable lines of inquiry, Pauling and fellow protein researcher Carl Niemann in 1939 published a paper marshaling all the chemical evidence in favor of their chain theory of protein structure and against Wrinch s arguments. Its impact was devastating. After it appeared, no one would take Wrinch s cyclols seriously again. 

Globular Proteins. Despite their importance, globular proteins are not as thoroughly studied as fibrous ones. They include, for example, albumin and hemoglobin. There have been some suggestions which, with one exception, have involved H bonds. This exception, Wrinch s cyclol theory (see, for example, 2202-2204), is of only p2issing interest, but its lack of conformity witK tha observed H bonding (as indicated by IR spectra) was one factor in its rejection. See 1602 for a criticism of the cyclol theory. 

I. Langmuir and D. Wrinch. Nature 143, 49-52 (1939). General discussion of cyclol bonds. 

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