Emily A. NUNN

1843 - 1927  (84 years)

• Name	Emily A. NUNN
  Birth	2 Jul 1843	Chevington, Suffolk, England, UK
  	England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Indexes
  Gender	Female
  Census	1851	Turnpike Rd, Great Barton, Suffolk, England, UK
  Census	1860	Medina, Ohio, USA
  Census	1870	Greenfield, Huron, Ohio, USA
  Census	1900	Falmouth, Barnstable, Massachusetts, USA
  Census	1910	Woodtown Ave, Chicago Ward 7, Cook, Illinois, USA
  Occupation	Zoologist
  Death	19 Oct 1927	Ithaca, New York, England, UK
  Notes	Details of Emily's life and family are included in the following publication: Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British women in science, 1800-1900: A survey of their contributions to research. Mary R.S.Creese. The Scarecrow Press, p.89, 1998. The writer describes Emily as having been born in Barton Mills, western Suffolk (however the 1851 census records her as having been born at Chevington along with several of her siblings). That aside, she was born 2 July 1843, the third of 11 children to Charles Robert Nunn and Miriam Towler Kendall. Charles joined Miriam as a dissenter from the Church of England (as a Baptist) and this was the reason the family moved to the US where Charles began farming in Ohio. The family farmed successfuly at Peru near Horwalk, Ohio, which enabled them to send Emily, Miriam and Lucius to a private academy in 1867. In 1869, Emily joined another sister, Ellen, in Dresden (Germany), to learn German. She later returned to the US as a German teacher in Chicago. In 1874, aged 30, Emily went back to England and studied biology at Newnham College, Cambridge as well as at Zurich Univeristy (albeit unofficially). On returning to the US, Emily was involved with the Boston Society of Natural History and Wellesley College, Boston. Her first paper was a report on the change in frog epidermis brought about by metals and was published in the Journal of Physiology (1878-79). She also completed a course in zoology and continued her research but was eventually dismissed from Wellesley College because of what is described as "eccentric behaviour and undisguised agnoticism". Afte that, in 1881, she returned to the UK where she worked with Thomas Huxley at the Royal College of Science. She wrote a paper on the enamel layer in teeth that was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1883. In 1882, she spent six months at the Naples Zoological Station but fell out with the station's founder and returned to the US where she worked for Alexander Agassiz's marine biological laboratory at Newport. There she met and married fellow zoologist Professor Charles Otis Whitman, an associate at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard. She was aged 40 and gave birth to two sons, Francis (1887) and Carroll (1890). Her brother Lucius who had made a fortune from mining and electrical power transmission projects, gave significant monetary support to his brother-in-law Charles Whitman. Because Whitman spent so much time on his research and largely ignored Emily and his sons, the couple basically living separate lives. After Whitman died in 1910, Lucius supported his sister and nephews. Note: Emily's struggle to be recognised as a woman in science is referenced at this link: http://pages.jh.edu/jhumag/1107web/women2.html Some of her papers: The Zoological Station at Naples, published in The Century Magazine, 771-848, September 1886. It can be found at this link: https://www.unz.org/Pub/Century-1886sep-00791 Nunn EA (1878). The structural changes in the epidermis of the frog, brought about by poisoning with arsenic and with antimony. J Physiol 1, 247-256.
  Person ID	I8538	Warren Nunn's family tree
  Last Modified	1 May 2016

  
  

  Father	Charles Robert NUNN,   b. 24 Jan 1816, Chedburgh, Suffolk, England, UK d. 26 Nov 1896, Peru, Huron, Ohio, USA (Age 80 years)
  Mother	Miriam Towler KENDALL,   b. 12 Sep 1818, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England, UK d. 9 Oct 1885, Ohio, USA (Age 67 years)
  Family ID	F534	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart