Edward Max Nicholson

Max Nicholson, as he was known to all, was born in Kilternan, Ireland, to English parents. His family moved to England in 1910, settling in Staines. He became interested in natural history after a visit to the natural history museum and later took to birdwatching, beginning to maintain a list of birds seen from 1913.

He was educated at Sedbergh School in Yorkshire and then Hertford College, Oxford from 1926, winning scholarships to both. At Oxford, he read history and visited Greenland and British Guiana as a founder member of the Oxford University Exploration Club. At Oxford, he organized bird counts and censuses on the University's farm at Sanford. In 1928, Nicholson created and managed the first national birdwatch survey, a survey of the grey heron.

Nicholson married Mary Crawford in 1932 and they had two children, Piers and Tom. The marriage was dissolved in 1964 and Crawford died in 1995. Nicholson then married Marie Mauerhofer (known as Toni) in 1965; they had one child, a son, David. She died in 2002. Max Nicholson died in 2003, aged 98.