Roy Franklin Nichols

Roy Franklin Nichols (March 3, 1896 – January 12, 1973) was an American historian, who won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Disruption of American Democracy.

Biography

Nichols was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Franklin Coriell and Annie Cairns Nichols. His wife was the historian Jeannette Paddock Nichols (1890-1982). He graduated from Rutgers University in 1918. He completed a Master of Arts degree from Rutgers in 1919. He was a fellow at Columbia University from 1920 to 1921, and an instructor in history at Columbia from 1921 to 1925. He completed a PhD degree from Columbia in 1923. In 1925 he was appointed assistant professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1930 to 1966, he was professor of history at Pennsylvania. He also was Dean of Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1952–66), and Vice Provost at Pennsylvania (1953–66). He was a visiting professor at Columbia (1944–45), Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University (1948–49), and Stanford University (1952). In 1962 he was Fulbright lecturer in India and Japan.

He was President of Middle States Association of History Teachers (1932–33); President of Pennsylvania Federation of Historical Societies (1940–42); Member of Pennsylvania Historical Commission (1940–43); Member of Council, American Historical Association (1943–47); Chairman of Social Science Research Council (1949–53); President of Association of Graduate Schools of the American Association of Universities (1963–64); Vice President of American Historical Association (1964–65); President of American Historical Association (1965–66); and, Chairman of Council of Graduate Schools in the United States.

He was a Baptist.

Awards and Honorary Degrees

Nichols received Haney Medal for Literary Excellence in 1961, and Athenaeum Literary Award in 1961. He has also received a number of honorary degrees from universities such as Rutgers University and Cambridge University.

Publications

• The Democratic Machine, 1850-1854 (1923)
• Franklin Pierce: Young Hickory of the Granite Hills (1931; 2nd ed. 1958)
• The Disruption of American Democracy (1948). (1949 Pulitzer Prize for History)
• Advance Agents of American Destiny (1956)
• Religion and American Democracy (1959)
• Blueprints for Leviathan: American Style (1963)
• History in a Self-Governing Culture (1966)
• The Invention of the American Political Parties (1967)

External links

• Roy Franklin Nichols biography
• Papers of Roy Nichols at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries