Henry Alleyne Nicholson FRS FRSE FGS FLS (11 September 1844 – 19 January 1899) was a British palaeontologist and zoologist.
Life
The son of John Nicholson (1809–1886), a biblical scholar, and his wife Annie Elizabeth Waring, he was born at Penrith, Cumberland on 11 September 1844. His younger sister was the writer Annie Elizabeth Nicholson Ireland, and one of his brothers was John Henry Nicholson, author and poet. He was educated at Appleby Grammar School and then studied Sciences at the universities of Göttingen (Ph.D., 1866) and Edinburgh (D.Sc., 1867; M.D., 1869). Geology had early attracted his attention, and his first publication was a thesis for his D.Sc. degree titled On the Geology of Cumberland and Westmoreland (1868).
In 1869 he began lecturing in Natural History at the extramural classes linked to Edinburgh University.
In 1871 he was appointed professor of natural history in the University of Toronto; in 1874 professor of biology in the Durham College of Science and in 1875 professor of natural history in the University of St. Andrews. This last post he held until 1882, when he became Regius Professor of natural history in the University of Aberdeen.
