Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/22

 was returned to the first legislative council of New South Wales as one of the five members for the Port Phillip district (now the state of Victoria). In July 1848, and again in Sept. 1851, he was elected member for the county of Argyle. From 2 May 1844 to 19 May 1846 he was chairman of committees of the legislative council, and on 20 May 1847, in May 1849, and October 1851, he was chosen speaker, retaining the office until the grant to the colony of responsible government in 1855-6, when he became for a short time a member of the executive council.

When in 1859 the district of Moreton Bay was separated from New South Wales and formed into the colony of Queensland, Nicholson was nominated on 1 May 1860 a member of the legislative council of the new colony, and was president during the first session, resigning the office on 28 Aug. 1860.

Nicholson was from the first a powerful advocate of popular education in New South Wales. He was a member of the select committee to inquire into the state of education in the colony moved for by Robert Lowe (afterwards Lord Sherbrooke), on whose report the educational systems of the Australian colonies have in the main been based. But his name is more intimately associated with the foundation of the University of Sydney. He watched over its early fortunes with unremitting care, was a generous donor to its funds, and endowed it with many valuable gifts, including the museum of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman antiquities which he collected with much personal exertion and at considerable cost. He was instrumental in obtaining a grant of arms from the Heralds' College in 1857, and the royal charter from Queen Victoria in 1858. On 3 March 1851 he was unanimously elected vice-provost, and delivered an inaugural address at the opening of the university on 11 Oct. 1852. He was chancellor from 13 March 1854 till 1862, when he left Australia permanently for England. There he chiefly resided in the country near London, actively occupied as a magistrate, as chairman of the Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Co., and as director of other undertakings, at the same time interesting himself in Egyptian and classical and Hebrew scholarship. Gardening was his chief source of recreation. Preserving his vigour till the end, he died on 8 Nov. 1903 at his residence, The Grange, Totteridge, Hertfordshire, and was buried in Totteridge churchyard. Nicholson was knighted by patent on 1 March 1852, and was the first Australian to be created a baronet (of Luddenham, N.S.W.) (8 April 1859). He was made hon. D.C.L. of Oxford in 1857, hon. LL.D. of Cambridge in 1868, and hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1886.

Nicholson married on 8 Aug. 1865 Sarah Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Archibald Keightley, registrar of the Charterhouse, London, and had three sons, of whom the eldest, Charles, succeeded to the baronetcy. A portrait by H. W. Phillips hangs in the hall of the university at Sydney; another by H. A. Olivier belongs to his widow.

 NICHOLSON, GEORGE (1847–1908), botanist, born at Ripon, Yorkshire, on 4 Dec. 1847, was son of a nurseryman, and was brought up to his father's calling. After spending some time in the gardens of Messrs. Fisher Holmes at Sheffield, he went for two years to the municipal nurseries of La Muette, Paris, and then to those of Messrs. Low at Clapton. In 1873 he was appointed, after competitive examination, clerk to John Smith, the curator at Kew; in 1886 he succeeded Smith as curator. He retired owing to ill-health in 1901, but continued his botanical researches at Kew as far as his strength allowed. A fluent speaker in French and German, Nicholson paid holiday visits to France and Switzerland, and travelled in Germany, Northern Italy, and Spain. Impressed with the value of a knowledge of foreign languages to young gardeners, he devoted much of his leisure to teaching some of them French. In 1893 he went officially to the Chicago Exhibition, as one of the judges in the horticultural section; and he took the opportunity to study the forest trees of the United States. In 1902, the year after his retirement, he visited New York as delegate of the Royal Horticultural Society to the Plant-Breeding Conference. Until 1886 Nicholson devoted much attention to the critical study of British flowering plants. His first published work, 'Wild Flora of Kew Gardens,' appeared in the 'Journal of Botany' for 1875. In the same year he joined the Botanical Exchange Club, and to its 'Reports' and to 