Melvin Lorrel "Pete" Nichols (November 30, 1894 – March 29, 1981) was an American chemistry professor and author.
Early life
Nichols was born in
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Day ...
, the son of Joseph Wiseman Nichols, a cabinetmaker, and Sarah Rebecca Heidelbaugh. He was the youngest of six children.
Career
Nichols was awarded his PhD from
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
in 1922. His thesis was “Dinitrosoresorcinol as a reagent for the quantitative determination of cobalt in the presence of nickel and other metals of the third group”.
He was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in Chemistry in 1929.
Nichols was on the faculty at Cornell University from 1923 to 1962, rising to become Emeritus Professor of Chemistry.
“Pete” Nichols' wrote two textbooks on analytical chemistry, Gas Analysis, co-authored with L.M. Dennis, and Laboratory Manual of Analytical Chemistry. In 1950, Pete Nichols agreed to become executive director of Cornell's Chemistry Department, a new position which involved supervision of the support facilities and the non-academic staff of what had become a large and complex establishment. He held this position until his retirement in 1962.
He died in California on March 29, 1981.
Personal life
He married Mary N Bancroft in 1926. They had one daughter, Sarah, "Sally".
References
Cornell University
Genealogy
Obituary
1894 births
1981 deaths
20th-century American chemists
Cornell University alumni
Cornell University faculty
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