Abstract

“Dear Sir,” the Girton College student wrote to her hero on September 9, 1914, “would you be so good as to tell me what you refer to in your article on Mysticism and Logic…” And so the long Russell-Wrinch friendship began. It would last to the end of his life. “Preparations are being made for Bertie Russell’s 90th birthday, she wrote to a friend as that day approached. “AM hoping to go.” “Wrinch was Russell’s ‘best’ apprentice in that she was the apprentice who most thoroughly embraced his philosophical program and practiced it throughout her intellectual contributions in mathematics, biochemistry, and philosophy,” says Landon Elkind. “In short, her practice matched Russell’s creed.” Yet Dorothy Wrinch is remembered (Google her!) as the creator and defender of a flawed yet paradoxically productive model of protein structure, and her consequent battle with Linus Pauling. Are these different Dorothy Wrinches? No, they are one and the same.