He then joined the Eveready Battery Co as a chemist where he was frustrated that his work to make longer lasting batteries was not well received by the marketing department.  He then returned to teaching but now in tertiary education.  During World War II he was a Gas Officer as the civil defence forces were very concerned that the likely Japanese invasion would include gas attacks.  He was lecturer, then senior lecturer in Chemistry at Sydney Technical College from 1940 to 1951, although on leave in London from 1947.  From 1952 to 1954 he was associate professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the New South Wales University of Technology.  In 1954 he was elected President of the Royal Society of New South Wales.  In 1955, Nyholm returned to England as Professor of Chemistry at University College London, where he worked until his death on 4 December 1971 as a result of a motorcar accident on the outskirts of Cambridge, England.