June Zimmerman was born in
Illinois on December 12, 1920. She was educated at the
Illinois Institute of Technology, and gained her PhD in physical chemistry in 1948 from
Bryn Mawr College. She did postdoctoral work at
Oxford University (1949–50) under Sir
Cyril Hinshelwood, then became an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at
Chatham College in
Pittsburgh (1950–53), served as a research associate at
Carnegie Institute of Technology (1954–55), and Associate Professor and Head of the Chemistry Department (1955–64) at
Newcomb College, the women's college of
Tulane University,
New Orleans, Louisiana. After a short stint at
Ohio Wesleyan University, in 1966, she joined the Department of History at The
Ohio State University, where she taught history of science as an associate and then full professor, retiring in 1984. In 1953, she married Paul Fullmer, who died on January 6, 2000, predeceasing her by only several weeks. Professor Fullmer held grants from the National Science Foundation and fellowships from the
American Association of University Women, the
American Council of Learned Societies, and the
Guggenheim Foundation. She was active in various history of science organizations and became Chairman of the
American Chemical Society's Division of
History of Chemistry in 1971. Her publications, ranging from technical articles in
chemistry journals, to biography, to essays on science and poetry, were polymathic in scope. Fullmer was the author of ''Sir Humphry Davy's Published Works
, published in 1969-70 by Harvard University Press and Oxford University Press. At the time of her death, which occurred on January 31, 2000, she was completing her multi-volume biography of Sir Humphry Davy, being published by the American Philosophical Society. Page proofs for the first volume, Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Chemist'', arrived just after she died. ==References==