Nichol Thomson, one of the founding figures of C. elegans research, recently passed away, peacefully, at the age of 91, on 26th March 2016.   He was responsible for a major part of  all the early electron microscopy work on the worm, and indeed his initial results with fixing  and sectioning C. elegans samples were decisive in persuading Sydney Brenner to work on C. elegans rather than some other nematode.   Nichol was an important influence, inspiration, colleague and friend to all of the C. elegans researchers at MRC-LMB in Cambridge UK, from 1964 until his retirement in 1989.