SMITH, HOMER WILLIAM

(b. Denver. Colorado. 2 January 1895; d. New York, N.Y- 25 March 1962)

physiology, evolutionary biology,

The youngest of six children. Smith grew up in Cripple Creek, Colorado, where his family encouraged his early fascination with science. He attended high school in Cripple Creek and in Denver, and received his A.B. degree from the University of Denver in 1917. After graduation Smith served in the armed forces, first in a battalion of engineers and ultimately as chemist in the Chemical Warfare Station of the American University in Washington, D.C.. Shortly after the end of World War I. he began studies with the physiologist William H. Howell at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a D.Sc. in 1921. He was a research fellow in the Harvard laboratory of Waller B. Cannon from 1923 to 1925 and subsequently became chairman of the department of physiology al the University of Virginia School of Medicine. In 1928 Smith was appointed professor of physiology and director of the physiological laboratories al the New York University College of Medicine. He retired in 1961 and died of a cerebral hemorrhage a few months later.

Smith’s research interests gradually shifted from physical chemistry through chemotherapy to the chemical physiology of the body fluids, By the late 1920’s he had focused his energies an problems of renal physiology. Toward the end of his life, however, he wrote: “Superficially, it might be said that the function of the kidneys is to make urine; but in a more considered view one can say that the kidneys make the stuff of philosophy itself.” He took the position, originating with Claude Bernard, that an animal’s true ambience is its own mitten intéricnr, not the external environment. The kidneys arc the chief regulators of this milieu, upon the constancy of which all other physiological processes depend. Smith thus used questions arising from Functional considerations of the kidney to probe phenomena as diverse as paleontology, the biology of consciousness, and the history of religion.

In 1928 Smith began his investigations on the African lungfish (Protoptems aethiopius). summarizing its biological significance in his philosophyical novel Kamongo; The Lungfish and the Padre (1932. revised 1949) and in his book on the evolutionary history of kidney function. From Fish to Philosopher (1953). He also published a number of papers on the comparative renal physiology of seal, the goosefish (Lopkius phcatorius), and both fresh– and salt–water elasmobranehs. Smith spent many summers in Maine at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, and he brought comparative studies to bear on the problems that became central to his later research: the functions of the mammalian (and especially human) kidney.

Smith played a major part in the development of contemporary understanding of the kidney. In the 1930’s he and A. N. Richards independently discovered that inulin. a kind of sugar, is filtered by the human and canine renal glomeruli and is then neither excreted nor absorbed by the tubules collecting ducts. Inulin thus made possible the accurate measurement of glomerular filtration rate (GFR), a concept introduced in the nineteenth century by Carl Ludwig. Smith did much to make van Slyke’s felicitous notion of “renal clearance” fundamental to the study of kidney function; and he and his collaborators elucidated the manner in which the kidney “clears” creatinine, urea,mannitol, sodium, and insulin. He also performed classic experiments on differential blood flow in both normal and diseased kidneys, and investigated that of the kidneys in the pathogenesis of hypertension.

Smith’s New York University laboratory became an international center of renal physiology where trained and collaborated with more than one hundred clinicians and physiologists. Despite his lack of formal medical training. Smith’s work possessed immediate clinical significance: and the ties between his laboratory and clinical departments were close and mutually fruitful.

Smith’s preeminence in his specialty was demonstrated by two monographs.The Physiology of the Kidney (1937) was the first comprehensive study of renal physiology in English since Cushny’s The Secretion of the Urine (1917). In his magnum opus, The Kidney: Structure and function Health and Disease (1951). a massive yet readable tome, Smith judiciously surveyed the entire fit of renal physiology and pathology. Its depth and scope made the book definitive.

Smith’s last book. Principles of Renal Physiology(1956), was an engaging summary written mainly primarily for medical students. He was in the process of revising It when he died.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to the works mentioned in the text, Smith, wrote two historical and philosophical studies in which he spelled out his own naturalistic humanism: The End of Illusion (New York. 1935) and Man and His Gods (Boston, 1952). which includes an autobiographical account of his Colorado boyhood.

A complete bibliography of his published writing though 1962 is in Herbert Chasis and William Goldring, eds., Homer William Smitk: His Scientific and Literary Achievements (New York. 1965), 259–268. This volume, edited by two of his colleagues, contains selections from Smith’s writings; a list of his awards, honors, and appointments; a partial list of the scientists associated with him at New York University; and a short memoir by Robert F. Pills that was reprinted (with bibliography) in Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, 39 (1967). 445–470.

William F. Bynum