RAYMOND L. NICHOLS
(Kansas & Trinity 1960) (5 July 1938 - 27 September 2019)
Ray Nichols – a Rhodes scholar, professor and head of the department of politics at Monash University, and a lively contributor to public affairs – has died aged 81.
Ray took his BA (honours) at KU, with a double major in politics and history. He spent three years as a Rhodes scholar at Trinity College, Oxford, being deeply influenced by Wittgenstein, and earning his master’s under the supervision of Isaiah Berlin. From Oxford, he went to Princeton on Woodrow Wilson and Danforth fellowships, and earned his PhD in record time; he won a Danforth post-doctoral fellowship, and, in 1965, he became of the founding fathers of the new University of California campus at Santa Cruz, as a fellow of Cowell College.