Timothy Alan Nieman was born on December 31, 1948 in Mount Healthy, Ohio, the son of Orville and Emma Nieman. He was a member of Boy Scout Troop 275 in Mount Healthy, where he earned Life Scout rank and the God and Country Award. After receiving a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Purdue University in 1971 and completing his PhD degree in analytical chemistry at Michigan State University in 1975, Tim joined the analytical chemistry group at the University of Illinois.
Soon after he arrived at Illinois, Tim invented a method - called bipolar pulse conductance - to determine ion...