Nick received his BS in chemistry from the University of Utah in 1962.  His PhD in biochemistry was from Duke with Charles Tanford.  His postdoc was in the chemistry department at Cornell with Gordon Hammes.  In 1968, Nick joined the faculty at Texas A&M where he focused on understanding the relationship between protein sequence, structure, and stability.  Nick is still there, at Texas A&M, as Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor, and McMullin Professor of Genetics.

From Nick regarding his experience in our department:

When I was a senior chemistry major at the U of U planning to go to medical school, I decided to take biochemistry with the first-year medical students even though the head of Chemistry, William J. Burke, advised against it because they did not treat the chemistry majors fairly???  Fortunately, I ignored him and first learned about lipids from Leo Samuels, and next learned about proteins from Emil Smith - a great lecturer who loved proteins. He apologized each day for wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt to class but said he had to work in the cold room that day. His group determined the aa sequence of papain and he then became the head of biochemistry at UCLA. During one lecture, he recommended that we go to a seminar on protein synthesis by Paul Berg from Stanford - before he won the Nobel Prize. I went and changed my mind during his seminar and decided to go to graduate school and work on proteins.

Emil Smith said good idea and told me to choose a school and he would make sure I got in. So I chose Harvard, Yale, and Duke. I eliminated Harvard because they wanted a detailed financial statement from my father and he was fairly wealthy - at least for Delta, Utah. I was accepted at Yale and would have probably worked with Fred Richards who was recruiting me. Good thing I did not go or I would have become a dull old x-ray crystallographer. I finally chose Duke because they just said they would support me and Yale said they would support me but I would have to apply for an NIH fellowship when I got there. Of course, Duke required the same but did not say so in the letter. Also, Emil Smith wanted me to go to Duke because Phil Handler was the head of biochemistry there and they were coauthors on the most popular medical school biochemistry textbook, White, Handler, Smith, and Stettin

Because of all this, I ended up getting paid well for doing a job that was great fun, research on proteins. All because of Emil Smith and your biochemistry dept.

Nick gave the initial gift to start the Pace Seminar Series in 1992 in honor of his Uncle John and Aunt Wanda.  We are pleased and grateful to announce that Nick very recently enhanced this gift to the level of an endowment that should allow this named seminar series to continue indefinitely.