Abstract
SCIENCE has lost a distinguished agricultural botanist in the death of Dr. W. G. Smith, who died in Edinburgh on Dec. 8,1928. Dr. Smith was born in Dundee on Mar. 20, 1866. He graduated in pure science in the University of St. Andrews, and after a short period of teaching in the Morgan Academy, Dundee, became a lecturer in agriculture under the Forfarshire County Council. Later he acted as a demonstrator in botany in the University of Edinburgh under the late Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour. Proceeding to Munich, he took a two years' course of study, gaining there in 1894 his doctorate of philosophy for a thesis entitled “Untersuchung der Morphologie und Anatomie der durch Exoasceen verursachten Sprossund Blatt-Deformationen.” This thesis was afterwards translated into Italian. Another result of his sojourn in Munich was his translation of von Tubeuf's standard work on the “Diseases of Plants by Cryptogamic Parasites,” which appeared in 1897. On his return from Germany, Dr. Smith became lecturer in botany in the University of Leeds, where he remained for “eleven years. In 1908 he was appointed chief of the biology department of the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture. For the last twenty years the College was his headquarters. Recently, under the scheme for the development of research work in agricultural problems, Dr. Smith was appointed advisory officer in agricultural botany to the Board of Agriculture for Scotland.
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DR. W. G. Smith. Nature 123, 101 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/123101a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/123101a0