Dorothy Maud Wrinch (12 September 1894 – 11 February 1976; married names Nicholson, Glaser) was a mathematician and biochemical theorist best known for her attempt to deduce protein structure using mathematical principles.

[2] For the academic year 1916–1917, Wrinch took the Cambridge Moral Sciences tripos and studied mathematical logic with Russell in London.

In 1920 Girton awarded Wrinch a four-year Yarrow Research Fellowship with the freedom to work on any area of her choice.

[1][2] She was Lady Carlisle Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford and first woman Lecturer in Mathematics at the University.

She was one of founders of the Biotheoretical Gathering (aka the 'Theoretical Biology Club'), an inter-disciplinary group that sought to explain life by discovering how proteins work.

However, experimental work by Irving Langmuir done in collaboration with Wrinch to validate her ideas catalysed the principle of the Hydrophobic effect being the driving force for protein folding.

Around the postwar time of her intellectual closeness to Russell, Wrinch may have had a romantic connection with his brother Frank and probably did have an unhappy attachment with another of his disciples, Raphael Demos.

[10] In 1922 Wrinch married her graduate supervisor at King's College London, the mathematical physicist John William Nicholson.

In 1939 Wrinch and her daughter moved to the United States, partly because the chancellor of Oxford University and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax advised her she would be most useful to the war effort by research and lecturing there.

[1] In 1941 she married Otto Charles Glaser, chairman of the biology department and vice-president of Amherst College, and it was in part through him that she was able to obtain teaching positions.

In 1944 Glaser was forced to resign as chairman because he had allowed his research assistant to spend time working for Wrinch.

Dorothy Hodgkin wrote in Wrinch's obituary that she was "a brilliant and controversial figure who played a part in the beginnings of much of present research in molecular biology.

"[11] On a more personal level, Hodgkin wrote, "I like to think of her as she was when I first knew her, gay, enthusiastic and adventurous, courageous in face of much misfortune and very kind.

Of special concern to her was the fact that parents generally lack the necessary expertise in practical matters like the suitable diet and social environment best-suited for a child's development, since their professional expertise is often in other areas, and that scientifically understanding these matters requires a great deal of a parent's time (away from their career).

would deal with all medical, nursing, psychological, and other services necessary for the health and well-being of parents and child, from pregnancy to the school door.