Cyril Stanley Smith

Cyril Stanley Smith (born Oct. 4, 1903, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Eng.—died Aug. 25, 1992, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.) was an American metallurgist who in 1943–44 determined the properties and technology of plutonium and uranium, the essential materials in the atomic bombs that were first exploded in 1945.

Obtaining his education in England and the United States, Smith became a research associate (1926–27) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and then spent 15 years with the American Brass Company at Waterbury, Conn., where he organized a research laboratory and carried out numerous projects. He became interested in the history of metallurgy after his marriage to a historian in 1931. He accumulated a library of original source books and, in collaboration with other scholars, made English translations of classic works on metallurgy. His book, A History of Metallography: The Development of Ideas on the Structure of Metals Before 1890 (1960), was based on this work.

In 1942 Smith took a research post in Washington, D.C., with the War Metallurgy Committee of the National Defense Research Committee. The next year he moved to Los Alamos, N.M., to work on the Manhattan Project for developing the atomic bomb and took charge of the exploration of the properties of uranium and plutonium. Smith and his associates also did important work with tungsten carbide and boron.

In 1946 Smith went to the University of Chicago, becoming head (1946–56) of the Institute for the Study of Metals there. In 1961 he left Chicago for MIT, where he was appointed professor of metallurgy and of the history of technology and science, becoming professor emeritus in 1969. Smith received numerous professional honours, including the Platinum Medal of the Institute of Metals, London (1970).