Marjorie Hope Nicolson (1894-1981), a pioneer investigator of the relationship between literature and science, helped shape the contemporary study of English and the humanities in American higher education as teacher, scholar, and administrator. She was the first woman president of Phi Beta Kappa and later served as president of the Modern Language Association.

Marjorie Hope Nicolson was born February 18, 1894, in Yonkers, New York, and died in White Plains, New York, on March 9, 1981. Her father, Charles Butler Nicolson, was the editor-in-chief of the Detroit Free Press during World War I and later became the paper's Washington correspondent. Her mother's maiden name was Lissie Hope Morris.

Nicolson took her B.A. at the University of Michigan in 1914 and her M.A. there in 1918. In 1920 she got her Ph.D. from Yale and did additional graduate work at Johns Hopkins from 1923 to 1926. She worked briefly for her father's paper, first as...