Robert Allan Smith

He was born in Kelso on 14 May 1909, the son of George J T Smith, a tailor, and his wife, Elisabeth Allan.

He was educated at Kelso Public School then Kelso High School then studied Mathematics and Physics at Edinburgh University graduating MA in 1930. He then attended Cambridge University as a postgraduate, 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 was appointed to 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 1962 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1969 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Hugh Bryan Nisbet, Norman Feather, Sir Harry Melville, Alick Buchanan-Smith, Baron Balerno. Smith served as President to the Society from 1976 to 1979.[4]

He died on 16 May 1980.

In 1934 he married Doris Marguerite Louise Ward.

• Radio Aids to Navigation (1947)
• Aerials for Metre and Decimetre Wavelength (1949)
• The Physical Principles of Thermodynamics (1952)
• Semiconductors (1959)
• The Wave Mechanics of Crystalline Solids (1961)