Nicholas Kemmer was born in St Petersburg on 7 December 1911, the only son of late Nicholas P. Kemmer and of Barbara Kemmer (née Stutzer; later Mrs Barbara Classen). In 1922 Kemmer's family settled in Germany and he was educated in Hanover at the Bismarckschule and then at the University of Göttingen. From 1932-1936 Kemmer conducted doctoral research in theoretical physics at the University of Zurich and was then appointed to the Beit Fellowship at Imperial College London.

During the Second World War, Kemmer went to Cambridge (in 1940) to take part in the wartime atomic energy project and in 1944 this work took him to Canada for two years. In 1946 he returned to Cambridge, initially as a Fellow of Trinity College and subsequently as Stokes Lecturer. There he met his future wife, Margaret whom he married in 1947 and with whom he had two sons and one daughter. Kemmer was the Tait Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh from 1953-79, then Professor Emeritus. He died on 21 October 1998.