Wrinch, Dorothy

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. 

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

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. 

A regular structure that for several years attracted more attention was formulated by Dorothy Wrinch in 1937 [7]. Her cyclol hypothesis postulates that, in proteins, secondary cyclic structures are present, similar to the crosslinks revealed later in ergot alkaloids, by the addition of amide, —NH-groups to opposite carbonyl groups forming an —N—C(OH)— bond and so preferably 6-membered rings (Fig. 1). Later it was shown in several instances that cyclols indeed occur in small cyclic peptides, but they were never found in proteins. 

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