Herbert Williams Smith, 3 May 1919 - 16 June 1987

Abstract

Herbert Williams Smith was a naturalist and veterinarian as well as an experimental scientist. The volume and variety of the work that he undertook and published are impressive. Throughout his life his research was applied, in being designed to answer questions of practical importance in the everyday world. He certainly felt it a moral duty to work hard to that end and also loved it, counting it his main recreation. In the course of addressing practical questions in very direct, original and technically simple ways, he made a series of discoveries that brought him international recognition. He explained the pathogenesis of those diarrhoeal diseases of young animals that are caused by some strains of Escherichia coli ; he showed that those strains produced enterotoxins and that, to cause disease, they also required specific, adhesive antigens to colonize the small intestine. He showed that both toxins and colonization factors were transmissible characters, determined by plasmids. He was also well known for his detailed study of the bacteriology of the intestinal tract, of salmonellosis in animals and of the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria of animals and man. Finally, he reopened the possibility, shelved for many years, of preventing or treating bacterial infections with bacteriophage. All this he did by himself, working alone or with junior assistants, and without sophisticated equipment or the back-up of a large institute. What he produced came from within himself. He was Herbert to his family and friends from early days, but to most people in the scientific world he was Willie Smith, and preferred to be called Willie.