Mary Adelaide Nutting is considered one of an “extraordinary triumvirate” of women who laid the foundation for excellence at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in the late 19th century. She, along with fellow nurses and Hopkins alumnae Isabel Hampton Robb and Lavinia Dock, also helped to establish national organizations that led to new standards in nursing education.

The late 1880s saw the beginning of a women’s rights movement and suffrage activism converge with social progressivism, heightening concern for defending professionalism in the female-heavy nursing profession. These three women were enormously influential in the fight to advance and safeguard the professionalism of nursing through high standards for training and education, despite resistance from conservative medical professionals of the time.

Nutting was a member of the first graduating class at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1891 and became the school’s superintendent in 1894, succeeding Isabel Hampton in that position. She strongly advocated university education for nurses. As Superintendent, she expanded the school’s training programs from two years to three years, which became the national standard for a nursing diploma. To enable nurses to access such education, she paved the way for reforms in training and work practices.

At the time, schools of nursing were supported financially by the hospitals which, in exchange, utilized the nursing students as cheap labor. In the late 19th century, it was not unusual for nurses to work 60 to 100 hours a week, which seriously limited the time and energy they could devote to the study needed for a sound education. Nutting put limits on the numbers of hours that could be worked. She also called on alumni to build an endowment fund that would liberate the nursing school from financial dependence on the hospital. Although it did not happen overnight, over several decades, such a fund was grown.

In 1984, at the dedication of a new degree-granting School of Nursing at Johns Hopkins, the Alumni Association presented the first endowed chair, named, appropriately, for M. Adelaide Nutting.

Although small in stature, Johns Hopkins history articles report that Nutting was still an “imposing figure” who could engender “real fear.” “Cool, with a sharp, critical logic,” “her tone of subtle scorn and her calm cool gaze were sufficient to terrify students.”

In 1907 she went to teach at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and later became chair of their new Department of Nursing Education and the first nurse anywhere to be appointed to a university professorship. She taught in an experimental program there in hospital economics, and subsequently wrote a book called A Sound Economic Basis for Nursing. Her most famous contribution to nursing literature, however, was the first two volumes of The History of Nursing, co-authored with Lavinia Dock, and still considered a great work on the subject. (Out of print, the four copies available on Amazon.com as of this writing are priced between $275 and $560.) She wrote many articles throughout her career for nursing and health periodicals.

In 1944 the Mary Adelaide Nutting Medal was created by the National League of Nursing in her honor. She died in White Plains, New York, in 1948; 28 days shy of her 90th birthday.