Rev. Julius Nieuwland, C.S.C. studied Latin and Greek as an undergraduate at Notre Dame before earning his degree in 1899. He was ordained a Holy Cross priest in 1903. As a graduate student in chemistry and botany at Catholic University of America, he discovered the compound lewisite, later used as a chemical warfare agent. He returned to Notre Dame in 1904 after receiving his Ph.D in 1904. He was a professor of botany until 1918, until switching to organic chemistry, which he taught until 1936. He is well-known for polymerizing acetylene into divinylacetylene, a synthetic rubber that led to the invention of neoprene by DuPont. Father Nieuwland also established the journal "The American Midland Naturalist," which today still exists as an international journal of ecology, evolution, and the environment.

Nieuwland Science Hall opened in 1952, paid for largely by DuPont from royalties on Neoprene.

Today, Nieuwland Science Hall houses the Department of Physics and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. It is also home to a low-energy nuclear accelerator, installed in March of 2012.