Alumni Profile:  Nicholas M. Molnar ChE’26

Nicholas Mikolos Molnar was born in 1903 in Hungary. He came to the United States in 1921, and graduated from The Cooper Union in 1926.    Nicholas got his master’s degree in chemical engineering at New York University in 1940 and studied later at Fordham University.

Soon after graduation from The Cooper Union, he went into business with his brother.  With his brother Julius he founded Molnar Laboratories in 1927. The laboratory was located in New York City and specialized in medicinal preparations, water treatments and boiler compounds, biochemical and clinical investigations and industrial, pathological, and bacteriological research.

The laboratory operated for 33 years and was dissolved in 1960.

Nicholas Molnar was also the founder and chairman of Fine Organics Inc., a producer of chemicals that was begun during World War II and later merged with the Hexcel Corporation.

Nicholas Molnar was the founder and chairman of the Cooper Union Research Foundation (CURF) of New York

Nicholas M. Molnar ChE’26 served as President of the Cooper Union Alumni Association

He passed away in 1979.

Nicholas M. Molnar ChE’26 received the CUAA Gano Dunn Medal in 1966. He received the Cooper Union Presidential Citation in 1966, and he was inducted into the Cooper Union Hall of Fame in 2009.

References:

Who’s Who in the East : a Biographical Dictionary of Noteworthy Men and Women of the Middle Atlantic and Northeastern States. – 6th ed. – Chicago : Marquis – Who’s Who, 1957.

Obituary in The New York Times, 1979.