Emily Gertrude Turner, MSc, (1888-1956) was born in Rotherham on April 16th 1888, and educated locally. She intended to follow a career in teaching, and following her initial experience as a pupil-teacher her photograph appeared in The Schoolmistress in June 1906, when the results of the King's Scholarship Examination (the final examination for pupil-teachers) of 1905 were announced, as one of the top 15 out of 8562 examinees in England and Wales. In 1906, at the age of 18, she entered the recently established Sheffield City Training College, which at this time had a close connection with the University, itself established in the previous year. She was therefore able to register as a degree student of the University while remaining attached to the Training College. In 1909 she graduated BSc in chemistry, mathematics and eEducation, and having distinguished herself in chemistry took the honours course the following year, thence proceeding to M.Sc. Following a further year of research, and another in taking the University's Diploma of Education, she became science mistress at the Rutherford Girls' High School at Newcastle.

In 1914, when almost all his regular staff had left for war service, William Palmer Wynne (1861-1950), DSc, MA, FRS, FRIC, Professor of Chemistry at Sheffield from 1904 to 1931, and Emeritus thereafter, invited Miss Turner to return to his department as temporary assistant lecturer in chemistry. Her temporary appointment turned into a career which lasted until her retirement in 1953, in which, to quote Arthur W. Chapman, "her teaching duties were always exacting and she gave much time to administrative work in the Chemistry, but on occasion she was able to undertake research and to publish, in collaboration with other members of the Department, work on ring systems and on derivatives of naphthalene and of toluene. She also gave much assistance to Wynne in the preparation of his articles in successive issues of Thorpe's Dictionary of Applied Chemistry".

Gertrude Turner died on June 15th, 1956, at her home in Rotherham.

[Notes based on University records, and material in the collection, including the obituary by Arthur W. Chapman, Registrar of the University of Sheffield, published in the 'Proceedings of the Chemical Society', October 1957]