Robert Allan Smith

Robert Allan Smith CBE DSc FRS FRSE (14 May 1909 – 16 May 1980) was a British mathematician and physicist.

Biography

Smith (known to his friends as Robin, and more widely as "RA") was born in Kelso on 14 May 1909, the elder of two sons of George J T Smith, a tailor, and his wife, Elisabeth (née Allan), a ladies' dressmaker. His education was initially at local village schools, followed by Kelso High School. In 1926 he entered the University of Edinburgh to study mathematics and natural philosophy, and gained his MA with first-class honours in 1930. He was also awarded a scholarship that took him to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read for the Maths Tripos Part II, obtaining his MA in 1932.

Smith's first research was at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he worked on the theory and experiment of atomic collisions.

In 1961 Smith was invited to become Professor of Physics at the University of Sheffield, but it wasn't a world he felt comfortable in,

In 1973 Smith was appointed to the Council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in October 1976 was elected its 32nd President, which office which he held until October 1979. He was elected FRSE in 1969.

Family

Smith met his future wife, Doris Marguerite Louise Ward, through the CICCU. They married in Cambridge on 15 December 1934, and had three children: Joy, Margaret and Alistair.

Robert Allan Smith died on 16 May 1980.

Books

Radio aids to navigation, Cambridge University Press, 1947 Aerials for metre and decimetre wave-lengths, Cambridge University Press, 1949 The physical principles of thermodynamics, Chapman & Hall, 1952 Detection and measurement of infra-red radiation (with F E Jones and RP Chasmar), Oxford University Press, 1957 Semiconductors, Cambridge University Press, 1959 Wave mechanics of crystalline solids, Chapman & Hall, 1961