Mary Adelaide Nutting

Mary Adelaide Nutting (1858 to 1948) was a Canadian nurse, educator and pioneer in hospital care, born in Frost Village in what is now Quebec. Admired in youth for Florence Nightingale, she enrolled in October 1889 in the first class of the Johns Hopkins nurse training program, graduated in 1891 and stayed on as head nurse, then assistant superintendent, and from 1894 superintendent and principal of the nursing school, where she began a lifelong campaign to bring the education of nurses within universities. In 1907 she joined an experimental program at the new Teachers College of Columbia University and rose to chair its nursing and health department, writing a curriculum built on preparatory nursing education, public health studies and social service. She led councils and committees that worked to standardize nursing education, wrote many scholarly works, and is the author of A History of Nursing, which remains an essential historical text.