Oxford University Press, USA
December 2012
On Sale: December 3, 2012
312 pages ISBN: 0199732590 EAN: 9780199732593 Kindle: B009R3XBKC Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
In the vein of A Beautiful Mind, The Man Who Loved Only
Numbers, and Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of
DNA, this volume tells the poignant story of the
brilliant, colorful, controversial mathematician named
Dorothy Wrinch.
Drawing on her own personal and
professional relationship with Wrinch and archives in the
United States, Canada, and England, Marjorie Senechal
explores the life and work of this provocative,
scintillating mind. Senechal portrays a woman who was
learned, restless, imperious, exacting, critical, witty, and
kind. A young disciple of Bertrand Russell while at
Cambridge, the first women to receive a doctor of science
degree from Oxford University, Wrinch's contributions to
mathematical physics, philosophy, probability theory,
genetics, protein structure, and crystallography were
anything but inconsequential. But Wrinch, a complicated and
ultimately tragic figure, is remembered today for her much
publicized feud with Linus Pauling over the molecular
architecture of proteins. Pauling ultimately won that bitter
battle. Yet, Senechal reminds us, some of the giants of
mid-century science--including Niels Bohr, Irving Langmuir,
D'Arcy Thompson, Harold Urey, and David Harker--took
Wrinch's side in the feud. What accounts for her vast if
now-forgotten influence? What did these renowned thinkers,
in such different fields, hope her model might explain?
Senechal presents a sympathetic portrait of the life
and work of a luminous but tragically flawed character. At
the same time, she illuminates the subtler prejudices Wrinch
faced as a feisty woman, profound culture clashes between
scientific disciplines, ever-changing notions of symmetry
and pattern in science, and the puzzling roles of beauty and
truth.
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