Evelyn Nicol

Nicol was born in Little Rock, Kentucky. Her parents were Daniel Eugene Carmon, a schoolteacher, and Margarite Wilson Carmon, a homemaker.[1] She was 8th of 11 children.[2] In an interview for Lifeology, Nicol explained that despite her family having very little: "we used to have a lot of fun. You couldn't grow up any better than that."[2] As their local school was underfunded, and only went to eighth grade, Nicol's father took it upon himself to give the children extra homeschooling.[2]

During her high school years, Nicol worked as a domestic to earn money.[3] When she graduated from high school, Nicol was offered a scholarship at Tuskegee University to study Home Economics.[2] She moved to Alabama in 1949 to attend university,[3] but she chose to study maths and chemistry instead of home economics.[2] She funded her studies by working two jobs.[2] She was top of her class.[3] Nicol graduated in 1953 with a degree in Chemistry and Mathematics, and earned the Beta Kappa Chi and Alpha Kappa Mu honours.[1]

From 1953 to 1955, Nicol worked as a research assistant for the Salk Polio Project of the Carver Research Foundation.[3][2] Under the supervision of Russel Brown, she worked on developing the first polio vaccine using HeLa cell cultures.[2] Nicol then joined the Cleveland City Hospital, working with Frederick C. Robbins and John F. Enders.[1] There, she was the first to successfully isolate the herpes zoster virus, which causes shingles, using amniotic cells in tissue culture.[1][2][3] In an interview for Lifeology, Nicol said: "Things just come to me. I don't know why. It just seems like common sense."[2]

Following these her early career successes, Nicol was headhunted by Rand Development Corporation, where she worked on isolating the Leukemia agent.[1] During this time, Nicol also worked for the University of Kansas Medical Centre, and the Michael Reese Hospital.[1]

Nicol then joined Abbott Laboratories as a research assistant in 1962.[2] There, she faced discrimination from her white colleagues, who would take credit for results and sabotage her work.[2] On 6 January 1976, Nicol patented a new technique to produce urokinase (U.S. Patent No. 3,930,944), an enzyme used to dissolve blood clots.[1] She was one of the few African American women to be awarded a patent in molecular biology.[2] Among her many achievements while working at Abbott, Nicol successfully developed a test for toxoplasmosis in pregnant women, and an interferon assay.[2]

In 1985, Nicol was recruited by Baxter Pharmaceuticals.[1] Within their hepatitis research and development group, known as Pandex, Nicol led the retrovirology division, which produced testing kits blood-borne diseases such as HIV.[2][3] Two blind studies funded by Abbott Pharmaceuticals determined that the testing kits produced under Nicol's leadership were the best available.[1] While at Baxter pharmaceuticals, Nicol used her seniority to combat workplace discrimination, and advocate for fairer hiring practices.[2][3] For example, she hired Linda Smith, whose resume had initially been rejected, likely because she had studied at a historically Black university.[2]

While she was working there, Pandex was bought by Nicol's former employer Abbott Laboratories. Nicol retired in 1990, refusing to work for a company that had been so openly discriminatory.[2][3]

Nicol had three children as a working mother.[2] Upon retirement, she lived in Waukegan, Illinois and later in Weston, Connecticut.[3] At the age of 89, Nicol was hospitalised for a stroke, and was diagnosed with Covid-19. She died from complications of the infection in May 2020.[1]