Emeritus Professor title for Chemistry stalwart

9 March, 2013

Emeritus Professor title for Chemistry stalwart

About 30 friends, family and former colleagues attended a ceremony at the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts on 5 April to see Professor Brian Nicholson receive the title Emeritus Professor from University of Waikato Vice-Chancellor Professor Roy Crawford.

Professor Nicholson, who retired from the University’s Chemistry Department last year after 37 years, has been one of the University’s most prolific science authors and his contribution played a key role in the University’s Chemistry Department being rated the best in New Zealand in the 2003 and 2006 Performance-Based Research Fund assessments.

Prof Crawford praised Prof Nicholson’s outstanding contribution through having more than 285 articles published in international journals.

“It is probably one of the most impressive records I have dealt with in my time,” Prof Crawford says.

Prof Nicholson, who was always more comfortable wearing a lab coat than the tie he donned for the ceremony, says his distinguished career was not something he had planned.

“People talk about career paths but my career has been a series of lucky, unplanned happenings,” he says, “with being offered a position at the University of Waikato in 1975 turning out to be one of the luckiest”.

“But it’s been fun. I am really pleased with this award, which formalises continuing links with the University, and I will follow the progress of the Chemistry Department with interest.”

ENDS

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