William Arthur Smeaton

William Arthur Smeaton (October 24, 1924, Broughty Ferry – January 22, 2001, Cambridge) was a British chemist and historian of science, who wrote more than seventy-five articles and several books on the history of chemistry in France in the 18th and 19th centuries.

He was deeply engaged with the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry which he chaired from 1986 to 1993. He was the 2001 recipient of the Dexter Award, given to historians of science by the American Chemical Society.

Chemical career From 1942, Smeaton studied chemistry at Imperial College London reading for a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1945. He became a lecturer and later a senior lecturer in inorganic chemistry at Northern Polytechnic (later London Metropolitan University), working there from 1946 to 1958.

Retirement Smeaton was active outdoors throughout his life, particularly enjoying mountain hiking and cross-country skiing. During his retirement, he became involved in archaeology, taking university classes, joining the Ely Archeological Society, volunteering on archaeological digs, and conducting a survey of masons’ marks used in building Ely Cathedral. He became an affiliated research scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University.

In 1993 he married Jacqueline Regester, with whom he had a son. They lived in retirement in Ely, Cambridgeshire. In 2001 he was posthumously given the Dexter Award by the American Chemical Society.

Selected bibliography