From 1897 until 1906, Nellie E. Goldthwaite served as the head of the Mount Holyoke Chemistry Department and taught courses such as general chemistry, organic chemistry, and quantitative analysis. In 1906, Goldthwaite left Mount Holyoke and accepted a job at the University of Chicago, where she stayed for ten years. During her time at the University of Chicago, Goldthwaite published many books on chemistry, one being The Principles of Jelly Making (1912), from which she was named a life-long member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “discovering the active principle in the making of jelly that is utilized in the manufacture of commercial dessert powders.”
After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1916, Goldthwaite spent four years traveling the globe, beginning with Japan and China. She spent three years traveling through these two countries before making a trip around the rest of the world in her final year of travel. It is during this final year that Goldthwaite most likely acquired the Cuneiform cone, which she later donated to Mount Holyoke College. Following her retirement, she returned to South Hadley, where she stayed until her death in 1946.