John Nichol

Born in Montrose in 1833, he was the son of the astronomer John Pringle Nichol and grew up largely in Glasgow. He studied at the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford, and went on to build a reputation as a brilliant teacher and literary scholar.

He is best remembered as the first Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow, a post he held from the early 1860s until 1889. His writing ranged across literary criticism, history, and biography, with books on figures including Byron, Burns, and Hannibal, and he was also noted for helping introduce more readers in Britain to American literature.

Contemporaries remembered him as an inspiring, highly individual lecturer whose enthusiasm could make literature feel vivid and immediate. He died in London in 1894, leaving behind a reputation as one of the early champions of English studies in the university world.