Robert Allan Smith

Robert Allan Smith CBE FRS PRSE (14 May 1909 – 16 May 1980) was a Scottish mathematician and physicist.[1][2][3]

Life

He was born in Kelso on 14 May 1909, the son of George J T Smith, a tailor and his wife, Elisabeth Allan. He attended school in Kelso then went to Edinburgh University graduating MA in 1930. He then attended Cambridge University gaining a further BA in 1932 and a PhD in 1935.

In 1938 he began lecturing in Mathematics at Reading University.

In the Second World War he worked on radar research at the Air Ministry Research Establishment at Bawdsey near Felixstowe, then the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Swanage from 1942, before a final placement at the Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern. He remained at Malvern until 1961.

In 1962 he moved to the United States to take the role of Director at the Material Science Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he remained until 1969. He returned to Britain in 1969 as Principal of Heriot-Watt University.

In 1969 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Hugh Nisbet, Norman Feather, Sir Harry Melville, and Alick Buchanan-Smith, Baron Balerno. Smith served as President to the Society 1976 70 1979.[4]

He died on 16 May 1980.

Family

In 1934 he married Doris Marguerite Louise Ward.

Publications

References

  1. ↑ SMITH, Prof. Robert Allan’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2012 ; online edn, Nov 2012 accessed 15 May 2013
  2. ↑ http://www.nahste.ac.uk/cgi-bin/view_isad.pl?id=GB-0582-HWU-1-19&view=basic
  3. ↑ S.D. Smith, Robert Allan Smith, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol.28, 479-504, 1982.
  4. ↑ BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX OF FORMER FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 1783 – 2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0 902 198 84 X.
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