Ronald Sydney Nyholm
| Sir Ronald Sydney Nyholm | |
|---|---|
| Born |
29 January 1917 Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 4 December 1971 (aged 54) Cambridge Motorcar Accident |
| Nationality | Australia |
| Fields | Chemistry |
| Institutions |
Eveready Battery Co University of Sydney University College London Sydney Technical College |
| Doctoral advisor | Christopher Ingold |
| Notable awards | Fellow of the Royal Society |
| Spouse | Maureen Richardson (1948) |
Sir Ronald Sydney Nyholm (29 January 1917 – 4 December 1971) was an Australian chemist who was a leading figure in inorganic chemistry in the 1950s and 1960s.
Born on 29 January 1917 as the fourth in a family of six children. Nyholm’s father, Eric Edward Nyholm (1878–1932) was a railway guard. Nyholm's paternal grandfather, Erik Nyholm (1850–1887) was a coppersmith born in Nykarleby in the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, who migrated to Adelaide in 1873. Ronald Nyholm valued his Finnish roots and was particularly proud in his election in 1959 as Corresponding Member of the Finnish Chemical Society.
Haling from the small mining town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, he was early exposed to the role of inorganic chemistry. He attended Burke Ward Public School and Broken Hill High School. Nyholm married Maureen Richardson of Epping, a suburb of Sydney, NSW, at St Mary Abbotts Parish Church, Kensington, London on 6 August 1948.
After graduating from Broken Hill High School, he attended the University of Sydney (B.Sc., 1938; M.Sc., 1942) and then University College London (Ph.D., 1950, supervised by Sir Christopher Ingold; D.Sc., 1953). On graduation Nyholm became a High School teacher - a contractual requirement of his scholarship to university.
He then joined the Eveready Battery Co as a chemist where he was frustrated that his work to make longer lasting batteries was not well received by the marketing department. He then returned to teaching but now in tertiary education. During World War II he was a Gas Officer as the civil defence forces were very concerned that the likely Japanese invasion would include gas attacks. He was lecturer, then senior lecturer in Chemistry at Sydney Technical College from 1940 to 1951, although on leave in London from 1947. From 1952 to 1954 he was associate professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the New South Wales University of Technology. In 1954 he was elected President of the Royal Society of New South Wales. In 1955, Nyholm returned to England as Professor of Chemistry at University College London, until his death in a motorcar accident on the outskirts of Cambridge, England, 4 December 1971.
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