Ruth Rowland Nichols was born on February 23, 1901 in New York City, New York, United States. She was the daughter of Erickson Norman Nichols and Edith Corlis Haines. Her father, a member of the New York Stock Exchange, had served as a Rough Rider under Theodore Roosevelt.
Nichols attended Miss Masters' School at Dobbs Ferry, New York, and graduated from Wellesley College in 1924. An average student, she devoted much time to athletics and dramatics.
In 1922, taking time out from college, Nichols learned to fly in Florida under the tutelage of Harry Rogers and received the first seaplane pilot's license ever issued to a woman by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
She worked briefly for the National City Bank in New York City, but after serving as a copilot for Harry Rogers on a nonstop flight from New York to Miami in 1928, she took a sales promotion position with the Fairchild Aviation Corporation. In 1929 she flew a Curtiss Fledgling to forty-six states in an attempt to set up a chain of aviation country clubs. The first was established at Hicksville, New York, but expansion plans were halted by the Great Depression. Nichols' desire to accomplish feats that had never before been attempted led her to search for new records, which in turn led to six serious crashes.
In 1929 she and Amelia Earhart formed a women pilots' organization known as the "Ninety-Niners. "
In 1930, Nichols flew from Los Angeles to New York in thirteen hours and twenty-one minutes, cutting one hour off the mark set by Charles Lindbergh. She expressed an interest in flying around the world, but Clarence Chamberlin suggested that she fly solo across the Atlantic instead. With his support and several sponsors, she obtained a Lockheed Vega, a single-engine, high-wing monoplane.
On June 22, 1931, Nichols took off from Floyd Bennett Field, New York, in her transatlantic effort, but crashed on landing at St. John, New Brunswick. She broke five vertebrae. Weather and lack of funds prevented another attempt. In October 1931 she flew from Oakland, California, to Louisville, Kentucky, corseted in a steel brace, and set a women's distance record of 1, 977 miles after fourteen hours in the air.
Nichols started a flying school for women at Adelphi College, Garden City, New York, in 1939 and was a director of Relief Wings, a humanitarian air service, from 1940 to 1949.
During World War II she was a member of the Civil Air Patrol. From 1945 to 1947, Nichols was director of public relations for the White Plains Hospital.
From 1952 to 1954 she was director of women's activities for Save the Children Federation in New York City; then, until 1956, she was director of the women's division of the United Hospital Fund; and in 1958, field director of the National Nephrosis Foundation, as well as pilot on a twenty-one-state tour.
In 1960 Nichols, who had never married, suffered from depression and was placed under a doctor's care. She died in New York City after taking an overdose of barbiturates.
Nichols was only the second woman to receive a pilot's license from the American government, and in 1927 received the second transport license issued to a woman. In March 1931, before her transatlantic attempt, she achieved the women's world altitude record of 28, 743 feet, and in April 1931 set the women's world speed record of 210. 754 miles per hour. On February 17, 1932, Nichols attained the diesel engine altitude record for men and women of 19, 928 feet. She was a special correspondent for UNICEF on a round-the-world tour in 1949, and received the title "world pilot. " Nichols was the first woman in the United States to pilot a twin-engine jet executive aircraft, a Moraine Saulnier (1955), and three years later, at the age of fifty-seven, served as copilot of an air force supersonic jet that exceeded 1, 000 miles per hour and reached an altitude of 51, 000 feet. This was the highest altitude achieved by any woman in the world. She received the Lady Drummond Hay Trophy in 1958.
Quotations: "When a person loves flying and understands it and knows the reason for an accident, there is no fear. I could hardly wait to be in the air again. That's just natural. "
Quotes from others about the person
"There was a handful of women who shared in the hardships and perils of aviation pioneering. Two names that stand out, as I look back upon the late twenties and early thirties, were Amelia Earhart and Ruth Nichols. " (Richard E. Byrd)
Nichols never married.
