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.
By:
Marjorie Senechal (Professor Emeritus Professor Emeritus Smith College)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 163mm,
Spine: 28mm
Weight: 540g
ISBN: 9780199732593
ISBN 10: 0199732590
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 31 January 2013
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Part I Dorothy Wrinch Chapter 1. Prologue Chapter 2. Culture clash at Cold Spring Harbor Chapter 3. Symmetry Festival Chapter 4. Dot Part II Logics Chapter 5. The Wrangler Chapter 6. Dear Mr. Russell Chapter 7. The Summation of Pleasures Chapter 8. Scientific method Part III Biology in Transition Chapter 9. The Spicules of Sponges Chapter 10. Homes are Hell Chapter 11. Metamorphoses Chapter 12. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest Notes and References for Part III Part IV Proteins and the Imagination Chapter 13. Hornet Buzz Chapter 14. The Cyclol Model Chapter 15. What Is She Doing Here? Chapter 16. ""Linus and Dorothy,"" the Opera, with Talkback Part V The Rosetta Stone of the Solid State Chapter 17. Crystals Chapter 18. X-rays and Insulin Chapter 19. Structure factors Chapter 20. Amherst College Wife Part VI I Died for Beauty Chapter 21. The Sequel Chapter 22. Strange Doings at Sandoz Chapter 23. Swan Song Chapter 24. Epilogue Cast of Characters Appendix Acknowledgments Notes and References Index"
Marjorie Senechal is the Louise Wolff Kahn Professor Emerita in Mathematics and History of Science and Technology, Smith College, and Co-Editor of The Mathematical Intelligencer.
Reviews for I Died for Beauty: Dorothy Wrinch and the Cultures of Science
It is tremendous that Senechal has excavated this story. She offers a gripping portrait of an era and of a scientist whose complications acquire a tragic glamour. It is a cautionary tale for which we must supply the moral ourselves. Philip Ball, Nature
