Gertrude Smith

Gertrude Elizabeth Smith (1894–1985) was the Edwin Olson Professor of Greek at the University of Chicago. She is known for her work on Greek law and her longstanding involvement in and support of the Summer Session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She was the first woman to be president of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South and is currently the only woman to have been president of CAMWS and the American Philological Association.

Career

Gertrude Smith was born in Peoria, Illinois and first studied at Bradley University before obtaining her undergraduate (BA 1916) and graduate (MA 1917, PhD 1921) degrees at the University of Chicago. Smith's doctoral dissertation focused on Greek law, a subject she continued to work on during her time on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Smith became the Edwin Olson Professor of Greek in 1933 and from 1934 to 1961 she was the Chair of the Department of Classics. In collaboration with Robert Bonner, Smith wrote the two volume work The Administration of Justice from Homer to Aristotle, a work which remains the key reference for work on Greek law. Smith also published a series of articles on the administration of justice in ancient Greece with Bonner in the 1940s.

Smith was President of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS) in 1933-34 and 1940-41 and President of the American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies) in 1958.

Smith served on the editorial board of the journal Classical Philology from 1925 to 1965.

Smith was a founding member of the national Classics honor society Eta Sigma Phi and was instrumental in making it a national society.

Smith's association with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens began in the 1940s. In 1948 Smith was a participant in the Summer Session and spent six weeks travelling around Greece. She returned in 1949 as the Annual Professor of Greek Literature. Smith led three Summer Sessions in 1958, 1960, and 1961. 1993 Jodi Magness (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) 1994 Jenifer Neils (Case Western Reserve University) 1996 James P. Sickinger (Florida State University) 1998 Ann Steiner (Franklin and Marshall College) 2000 Timothy Winters (Austin Peay State University) 2001 Mark D. Fullerton (Ohio State University) and Clayton M. Lehmann (University of South Dakota) 2002 Lisa R. Brody (Yale University Art Gallery) 2003 Peter Krentz (Davidson College) 2005 Mark Munn (Pennsylvania State University) and Mary Lou Zimmerman Munn (Pennsylvania State University) 2006 Daniel Levine (J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences) 2007 Judith Barringer (University of Edinburgh) 2009 Eleni Hasaki (University of Arizona) and Timothy Winters (Austin Peay State University) 2010 Kirk Ormand (Oberlin College) and Clayton M. Lehmann (University of South Dakota) 2011 Mark Munn (Pennsylvania State University) 2019 Matthew A. Sears (University of New Brunswick)