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Quotes by or related to Dorothy Wrinch


"The picture is, however, still very far from definite - she suggests various alternatives and does not make any definite predictions."
Linus Pauling. Letter to Warren Weaver. March 6, 1937.


"[Delbrück's] training in physics is good and he attacks biological problems in a sensible way. He understands their nature, whereas Dr. Wrinch does not."
Linus Pauling. Letter to Warren Weaver. February 23, 1938.


"It has been recognized by workers in the field of modern structural chemistry that the lack of conformity of the cyclol structures with the rules found to hold for simple molecules makes it very improbable that any protein molecules contain structural elements of the cyclol type."
Linus Pauling Carl G. Niemann. "The structure of proteins." Journal of the American Chemical Society, 61, 1860-1867. 1939.


"Deeply inspired by D'Arcy Thompson's ideas on form, Wrinch capitalized on topological considerations. She proposed during the mid-1930s a honeycomb-like cage structure, a cyclol, for native globular proteins. That the cyclol consisted of 288 amino acid residues - and thus supposedly offered yet another independent source of evidence for the Svedberg and Bergmann-Niemann units - only served to enhance the 'hypnotic power of numerology."
Lily E. Kay. The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Rise of the New Biology (New York: Oxford University Press). 1993.

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