Norma Emerton
Cambridge scholar of science and committed Anglican
NORMA EMERTON, the scholar of the history and philosophy of science who has died aged 86, was associated with Wolfson College, Cambridge, for almost 50 years, as a PHD student, Senior Member, Senior Tutor, Fellow, and President of the Society of Emeritus Fellows.
She was a stalwart supporter of Wolfson’s non-hierarchical ethos and was dedicated to the advancement of women in the academic and scientific worlds. The college, which provides for graduates and mature undergraduates, has no High Table and all the college facilities are available equally to students, staff and fellows. Occasional proposals to restrict access would invariably meet with Norma Emerton’s vigorous opposition.
She was a driving force behind Wolfson’s broadening of opportunity with the development of part-time courses at Master’s degree level and was a highly effective Senior Tutor – dealing with both student problems and problem students.
In 1985 she won the American Phi Beta Kappa Science Award for her book The Scientific Reinterpretation of Form,a study of the development from the Greeks onwards of the concept of form, connecting the history of science to the history of philosophy and art. The book was acclaimed and is still cited.
She was born Norma Elizabeth Bennington in Hounslow on May 21 1932 to Norman Bennington, the Ealing borough treasurer, and Dorothy (née Evans). After attending the village school at Rhos-on-sea, North Wales, as a wartime evacuee, she was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls in Hertfordshire. In 1950 she went to read Chemistry at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she acted as a research assistant to Dorothy Hodgkin (later a Nobel laureate), working on X-ray crystallography.
Meanwhile, at a bible study group in Oxford she met a painfully shy young man who offered to teach her Hebrew. She accepted the offer. Hebrew prevailed over Arabic, which Norma had also agreed to study, with a rival, and she married her Hebraist, the Rev John Emerton, in 1954. Emerton’s academic career meant moves to Durham, Cambridge, Oxford and back to Cambridge in 1968, when he took up the Regius Professorship of Hebrew.
Norma Emerton, despite the demands of three young children, embarked on a PHD on “The background of chemical theory to crystal studies in the 17th and 18th centuries”, completing it in 1975. Her involvement with Wolfson College intensified and she became Senior Member (1981-94), Senior Tutor and Fellow (1994-99), and Emeritus Fellow (from 1999). In retirement she proved to be an able administrator of the Society of Emeritus Fellows, as secretary, then president.
She held to a robust, distinctively Anglican Christian faith, which she believed to be entirely compatible with science. The Emertons attended St Mark’s Church, Newnham, particularly the 8am service of Holy Communion according to the Book of Common Prayer, which John celebrated.
Norma Emerton, who was (in the words of a colleague) “direct and extremely determined … but kind and compassionate”, also brought her energy to being a trustee of the Church Schools of Cambridge, a 300-year-old trust supporting schools.
During her husband’s long decline in health, she did not pretend that looking after him was easy, but she got on with it. After his death in 2015, she found contentment in resuming attendance at Communion and social activities connected with the church. She again became a fixture at Wolfson events.
When she had received a diagnosis of terminal illness and was being cared for in the Arthur Rank Hospice, her chief regret was that she would not be able to finish her book on the pre-scientific-era understanding of the Genesis creation narratives.
Norma Emerton is survived by a son and two daughters.
Norma Emerton, born May 21 1932, died August 30 2018