NICOL, D(onald) M(acGillivray) 1923-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born February 4, 1923, in Portsmouth, England; died September 25, 2003, in Cambridge, England. Historian, educator, and author. Nicol was a scholar of the history of Byzantium who published numerous books on his favorite subject. Becoming interested in the Byzantine Empire while serving in Greece as part of the Friends' Ambulance Unit at the end of World War II, Nicol returned to England and studied under Steven Runciman at Cambridge University. He earned his master's degree there in 1948, and a Ph.D. in 1952. From 1952 to 1964, Nicol lectured in classics at the National University of Ireland in Dublin. He then spent a year on a fellowship as a researcher at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies in Washington, D.C., and taught Byzantine history as a visiting professor at Indiana University at Bloomington from 1965 to 1966. Nicol then returned to Great Britain as a reader in Byzantine history at the University of Edinburgh; from 1970 until his 1988 retirement, he was Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language, and Literature at King's College in London. The first three years after his official retirement were spent as director of the Gennadius Library in Athens, and he continued to publish books well into the 1990s. Among these works are The Despotate of Epiros (1957), The Last Centuries of Byzantium: 1261-1453 (1972), Church and Society in the Last Centuries of Byzantium (1979), Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (1988), The Immortal Emperor: The Life and Legend of Constantine Palaiologos, the Last Emperor of the Romans (1992), and The Reluctant Emperor: A Biography of John Cantacuzene, Byzantine Emperor and Monk (1996).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Guardian (London, England), October 3, 2003, p. 31.

Independent (London, England), October 3, 2003, p. 22.

Times (London, England), October 8, 2003.