David Smith

Sir David Cecil Smith (born 21 May 1930 Port Talbot, South Wales – 29 June 2018 ) was a British botanist. Smith was most notable for his research into the biology of symbiosis and became a leading authority on it. Smith discovered that lichens and Radiata (coelenterates) shared a similar biological mechanism in carbohydrate metabolism. Further research by Smith demonstrated similar processes in organisms that worked within a symbiotic relationship. The family remained in the Sinai desert until the end of World War II, except for occasional periods of leave. In one such period, Smith was born, and lived in the Sinai desert until he was five, when he returned to the UK to live with his grandparents and aunt, Iris, in Port Talbot where he attended primary school. It was while St Paul's School, that his interest in the subject of biology started, while on field trips. Smith returned to a position at Oxford in 1980 as the Sibthorpian Professor of Rural Economy, From 1994 to September 2000 he was President of Wolfson College, Oxford He became an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford in 2002.

He was a distinguished supporter of Humanists UK.

He was a member of the Advisory Council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering.

Honors and awards Smith also received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1993 He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1975 and was biological secretary from 1983 to 1987. He was awarded a knighthood in 1986.

Personal life Smith married twice, firstly in 1959 to the plant physiologist Daphne Osborne, but they divorced in 1962. In 1965, he married Lesley Mutch, a Scottish doctor and epidemiologist and they had three children together, called Bryony, Adam and Cameron. Upon his retirement, the family returned to Morningside in Edinburgh in 2000.