Nunn , Sir , Thomas Percy , 1870-1944 , Knight , educationist

Thomas Percy Nunn was born in Bristol in 1870, the son of a schoolmaster. He was educated and taught in his father's school. In 1903 he joined the staff of the London Day Training College where he taught mathematics and science and supervised the arrangements for teaching practice. In 1905 he was appointed Vice-Principal and was Principal of the College, 1922-1932, and Director of the Institute of Education, University of London, 1932-1936. He became a University Professor of Education in 1913, and was knighted in 1930. Nunn sat on the Board of Education's Consultative Committee, was an influential witness to the Hadow Committee, served on the Labour Party's advisory committee on education, and was a member of the Child Guidance Council. His academic interests were broad, encompassing science, mathematics, philosophy and psychology. Nunn was involved in a wide range of organisations, including the Aristotelian Society, the British Association, the British Psychological Society, the Mathematical Association and the Training College Association. His publications included The Aims and Achievements of Scientific Method: An Epistomological Essay (1907) and Relativity and Gravitation (1923), but it is for Education: Its Data and First Principles (1920) that he became most famous. Nunn died in Madeira in December 1944.