SMITH, ERWIN FRINK

(b. Gilbert’s Mills, New York, 21 January 1854: d, Washington. D.C., 6 April 1927)

plant pathology, bacteriology.

Smith was the son of Rancellor King Smith and Louisa Frink Smith, who left New York to farm near Hubbardston. Michigan. Smith graduated from high school in Ionia, Michigan, then attended the University of Michigan, from which he received the B.Sc. in 1886 and the doctorate in 1889. From his youth. Smith was profoundly interested in botany; he served in the United States Department of Agriculture from 1899 and later was director of the plant pathology laboratory of the Bureau of Plant Industry. His researches made him the most distinguished of the early American plant pathologists. His work fully established that bacteria cause plant disease—a view that was vigorously contested by his European counterparts.

One of Smith’s earliest investigations concerned yellows, a perplexing disease of the peach of which the etiology is not yet fully understood. Smith established the infectious nature of the disease and attempted its control by eradication. Although he was personally disappointed by his inability to discover the causative agent, he nevertheless disproved a number of earlier misconceptions about the malady.

Smith was more successful in demonstrating that bacterial pathogens invade plants through wounds and natural openings. He also showed insect transmission in certain diseases and provided a workable classification of genera of bacterial plant pathogens. He demonstrated that certain soil fungi (Fusaria) cause widespread and devastating vascular wilts. Smith’s later years were taken up with the study of crown gall disease, which he compared to animal cancer. His studies on tumor formation in plants in its relation to cancer in man and animals won him the certificate of honor of the American Medical Association in 1913. His researches are summarized in a number of papers and, especially, in his three-volume Bacteria in Relation to Plant Diseases.

Smith was a member of a number of scholarly societies and received many honors. He had broad interests in biology and was a lover and patron of music, art, and literature (a collection of his sonnets was brought out privately in 1915). He was twice married, first to Charlotte May Buffett, who died in 1906, then to Ruth Warren, who survived him. His home life was simple to the point of austerity, and, although not an active churchman, he was deeply religious.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Smith’s most important works are Bacteria in Relation to Plant Diseases, 3 vols. (Washington. D.C., 1905–1914): and An Introduction to Bacterial Diseases of Plants (Philadelphia-London, 1920). He published widely in journals, and bibliographies of his works may be found in notices by L. R. Jones and R. H. True, cited below.

II. Secondary Literature. On Smith and his work, see Florence Hedges, “Dr. Erwin F. Smith, Scientist, is Dead.” in United States Department of Agriculture Official Record, 6 (1927), I, 5, 8; L, R. Jones, “Biographical Memoir of Erwin Frink Smith,” in Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences, 21 (1939). 1–71, with portrait, synopsis of researches, and bibliography: L. R. Jones. W. H. Welch, and F. V. Rand, “To Erwin Frink Smith,” in Phytopathology. 18 (1928), 1–5 testimonials to Smith given at a dinner in Philadelphia in December 1926: F. V. Rand, “Erwin F. Smith,” in Mycologia, 20 {1928). 181–186, with portrait; A. D. Rodgers, III. “Erwin Frink Smith, a Story of North American Plant Pathology,” Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 31 (1952); and R. H. True “Erwin F. Smith (1854–1927),” in Phytopathology17 (1927), 675–688, with portrait and bibliography.

Robert Aycock