Dorothy Wrinch with students at Smith College, 1965-1966
Dorothy Maud Wrinch was a chemist, biologist, and physicist most famous for her development of the cyclol theory. Throughout her career, she used her background in mathematics to apply math to biology, and was an important early figure in molecular biology.
Wrinch was born in 1894 in Rosario, Argentina to English parents Ada Minnie Souter and Hugh Edward Hart Wrinch. In 1913 Wrinch received a scholarship to Girton College, a residential women's college at Cambridge. There she studied pure and applied mathematics, earning her BA degree with first-class honors in 1916. Wrinch stayed a fourth year at Girton to study mathematical logic with Bertrand Russell. After earning her MA in 1918, Wrinch taught mathematics at University College, London while completing her MSc (1920) and DSc (1922). She moved to Oxford in 1922 after marrying John Nicholson. (They would separate in 1930.) Wrinch taught mathematics to women at Oxford and earned her second MSc in 1924. Her daughter, Pamela, was born in 1928. The next year, Wrinch was the first woman awarded a DSc from Oxford. She diverged from her more prominent mathematical writings in 1930 when she published the sociological work Retreat from Parenthood under the pseudonym Jean Ayling.
In the 1930s, Wrinch expanded her studies to biology and chemistry, and traveled to several locations throughout Europe for fellowships. She came to the United States in 1935 on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and after the outbreak of World War II, was to live in the United States for the remainder of her life. Wrinch lectured at Johns Hopkins University from 1939 to 1941, after which she became a visiting research professor for Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Amherst Colleges. Wrinch remarried in 1941, to Amherst College biology professor Otto C. Glaser, and became a U.S. citizen in 1943. It was during this time that Wrinch developed and first published her controversial cyclol theory of protein structure. Wrinch wrote extensively on this theory, and defended it enthusiastically at all points. Though she had some supporters, notably Irving Langmuir, she had many more critics, among them Linus Pauling. Though her theory was eventually applied successfully, Wrinch's overzealous and singular focus on cyclol theory alienated her from many in the scientific community.
Wrinch was appointed a Smith College professor in 1942, and for the next three decades, researched, lectured, and taught graduate student seminars there. During summers, she and her family lived in Woods Hole, Massachusetts where she taught and lectured in physics. Her research during the 1940s focused on developing techniques for interpreting complex crystal structure x-rays, as well as mineralogy. In 1954 Wrinch finally won definitive support for her cyclol theory when cyclol bonds were found in ergot alkaloids. Throughout the course of her career, she published 192 works, a list of which can be found in Marjorie Senechal's Structures of Matter and Patterns in Science (in SERIES VIII. SMITH COLLEGE - Symposium).
Otto Glaser died in 1951 and Wrinch's daughter Pamela was killed in a fire in 1975. Wrinch moved to Woods Hole after her retirement from Smith in 1971. She died February 11, 1976.
The Dorothy Wrinch Papers contain original manuscripts; models; printed material; publications and writings; notebooks and scrapbooks; as well as extensive correspondence which illuminates her research and views on crystal structure, cyclols, peptides, mineral twins, x-ray methods, insulin, and polyhedra. Also included are articles by colleagues and contemporaries, lecture notes, grant correspondence, models and photographs. There are also selected letters and writings by her daughter Pamela Wrinch Schenkman (1927-75).
This collection is organized into eleven series:
The papers are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection without any additional restrictions.
Permission must be obtained to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use." Copyright to unpublished materials may be owned by the creators, or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights.
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Dorothy Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Dorothy Wrinch donated her papers to the Sophia Smith Collection in 1976.
Reprocessed by Carrie Baldwin, 2008.
Related materials in the Smith College Archives: Faculty files; President's Office files (correspondence re: appointment); and files on 1976 symposium in honor of Dorothy Wrinch.
Julian, Maureen M. "Wrinch, Dorothy Maud." Susan Ware, ed. Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the 20th Century. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2004.
This series includes biographical material, clippings, and obituaries about Dorothy Wrinch; plus her legal papers, college appointments, and list of publications. There are also personal notes, diaries, and address books. Also included is information about her father Hugh Edward Hart Wrinch, and Otto Glaser (1881-1951), her second husband. For biographical material on her daughter Pamela Wrinch Schenkman, see SERIES X.
This series includes photographs of Dorothy Wrinch, Otto Glaser, Pamela Wrinch, and miscellaneous friends.
This series is organized into three subseries: Family, Individuals, and Miscellaneous. The correspondence is arranged alphabetically. Family correspondence includes letters regarding Otto Glaser's death, 1951. Individuals' correspondence is in alphabetical order by last name of correspondent. It includes both professional and personal correspondence to and from Wrinch, and occasional third party correspondence. The subseries includes copies made from the Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University. Significant correspondents include crystallographer David Harker (1938-46); chemists Linus Pauling (1938-41), Irving Langmuir (1938-46), Harry Sobotka (1937-65), Arthur Stoll (1955-61), Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkins (1936-69), and naturalist D'Arcy Thompson (1924-43). Correspondence with Eric Neville and Harry Sobotka includes Wrinch's notes with the letters. Miscellaneous correspondence includes correspondence between Langmuir, Huggins, Pauling, Lamb, and Harker, 1938-40; and financial and purchase orders; the Princeton project, 1946-47; reprint requests; wedding congratulations; and unidentified correspondence. Some correspondence can also be found in SERIES VI. WRITINGS, SERIES VIII. SMITH COLLEGE, and SERIES XI. NOTEBOOKS.
This series includes correspondence and miscellaneous material from the Office of Naval Research (1947-1958), National Science Foundations (1961-1964), Rockefeller Foundation (1930, 1935-40), and miscellaneous grants.
This series includes reprints, articles, abstracts, and newspaper articles published by Dorothy Wrinch. There are also drafts of her work with comments and notes by Wrinch and others, and some diagrams and illustrations.
This series includes Wrinch's unpublished written work and is organized chronologically. It includes manuscripts, non-technical unpublished writings, essays concerning the direction of her work, speeches, diagrams, notes (both technical and non-technical), and marked reprints. There are notes, diagrams, and drafts relating to twinning and symmetry; early studies on peptides; notes on bacitracin and insulin, and correspondence and notes from and with P.B. Medawar, D'Arcy Thompson, and H.B. Vickery.
This series includes models and structures of Wrinch's work, in various forms. Most of the material is photographs, negatives, diagrams, orders for models, and descriptions of models. There are also three-dimensional models and two scrapbooks in Oversize Materials.
This series contains material from Wrinch's time at Smith College as a visiting professor, researcher, and lecturer in the physics department. Material includes class and seminar notes, schedules, examinations, and student recommendations.
This series contains miscellaneous material, including bibliographic references, lists of people, memorials to Bohr and Sobotka, Physical Society material, reprints and writings by others, and clippings.
This series includes biographical material and clippings about Wrinch's daughter, Pamela Wrinch Schenkman, as well as her daughter's writings on international relations and some personal writings.
This series contains Wrinch's scientific notes, clippings, reprints, and correspondence and is arranged chronologically. The numbering system on the notebooks (1-36) was done by the compiler, not Wrinch, and was used only for points of reference. The dates on some of the notebooks were determined by examining some of the dated information inside, which was sketchy at best. Some folders have subject notations on the front. These are not meant to be definitive, but rather an indication of some material within.
[see also SERIES VI. WRITINGS - Research Notes - Twinning: notes for companion paper with Donnay]
[see also Misc. correspondence and Langmuir correspondence]
[see also David Harker correspondence and Misc. correspondence]
[see also SERIES VI. WRITINGS - Research Notes - Notes re: D'Arcy Thompson]
[see also SERIES VI. WRITINGS - Research Notes - Notes re: D'Arcy Thompson]
[see also SERIES VI. WRITINGS - Research Notes - Discussion with H.B. Vickery]
[see also SERIES IX. MISCELLANEOUS - Memorials: Harry Sobotka]
[see also SERIES III. CORRESPONDENCE - Individuals - Jose and Gabrielle Donnay]
[see also OVERSIZE MATERIALS - Wooden Boxes for original models]
[see also SERIES III. CORRESPONDENCE - Family - Pamela Wrinch]
[see also SERIES VII. MODELS AND STRUCTURES and SERIES XI. NOTEBOOKS]
[see also SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS - Biographical information]