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He was born on January 21, 1860 in Cortland, New York, United States, the second of four children and younger of two sons of Abram P. Smith, lawyer and county judge, and Mary Elizabeth (Bronson) Smith. His father was descended from Henri Schmidt, who immigrated to the United States about 1770, probably from Alsace, and settled in Cortland; his mother was the daughter of a cultivated country physician.
David learned Greek and Latin from his mother, who died when he was twelve. He attended the newly founded State Normal School in Cortland and went on to Syracuse University, where he studied art and classical languages, including Hebrew. He graduated with a Ph. B. degree in 1881. He received the degrees of Ph. M. (1884) and Ph. D. (1887) from Syracuse, the latter in art history. Later he took the degree of Master of Pedagogy at Ypsilanti.
He followed his father's wishes and took up the law, but after being admitted to the bar in 1884 he abandoned the legal profession to accept an appointment as teacher of mathematics in the State Normal School at Cortland.
From the beginning, Smith's mathematical interests lay in teaching and history rather than in original research. In 1891 he became professor of mathematics at the State Normal College at Ypsilanti, Mich. He published his first textbook, Plane and Solid Geometry (written with Wooster W. Beman), in 1895; his History of Modern Mathematics appeared the following year.
In 1898 Smith was made principal of the State Normal School at Brockport, New York. Three years later he became professor of mathematics at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he remained until his retirement in 1926.
Smith's proficiency in languages, combined with his love of travel, early brought him in touch with mathematicians abroad. An appointment to the International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics, headed by Prof. Felix Klein of Gottingen, placed him in a position of international influence. He served as vice-president of this group, 1908-20, as president, 1928-32, and as honorary president thereafter.
He was appointed librarian and an associate editor of the Bulletin of American Mathematical Society. During his long tenure (1902 - 20), Smith expanded the society's book collection into a noteworthy library. He was vice-president of the society in 1922. He rendered equally important service to the Mathematical Association of America, becoming an associate editor of the American Mathematical Monthly in 1916 and president of the association during the term 1920-21.
He was among those who encouraged Otto Neugebauer to set up the Mathematical Reviews, the American equivalent of the Zentralblatt fur Mathematik. He supported Herbert E. Slaught in establishing the Carus Monograph series. He was the first president of History of Science Society in 1927.
An avid collector, Smith traveled to all parts of the world, buying rare books, manuscripts, and mathematical and astronomical instruments. He worked closely with a fellow collector, the publisher George A. Plimpton, and advised him on many purchases. The nearly 11, 000 books Smith himself assembled covered with great comprehensiveness the writings of mathematicians before 1900, but he concentrated particularly on objects from India and the Far East and on medieval material from Europe and the Islamic countries. To his efforts can be ascribed the awakening of interest in the mathematics of the medieval Orient and the Middle East.
Smith died at the age of eighty-four at his home in New York City.
Serving as professor of mathematics at Teachers College, David Eugene Smith wielded a great and lasting influence on mathematical instruction in the United States. The textbooks he wrote for use in elementary and secondary schools numbered at least 150; they were widely adopted throughout the United States and were used in translation in other countries as well. He was instrumental in the founding of the History of Science Society, strongly supported the compilation and translation of historical material by established scholars such as Thomas L. Heath, Raymond C. Archibald, George Bruce Halsted. He also donated his collection of nearly 11, 000 books to Plimpton-Smith-Dale Library, Columbia. His best-known historical works are the Rara Arithmetica (1908), Number Stories of Long Ago (1919), and his History of Mathematics (1923 - 25).
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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His foreign affiliations included membership in the Deutsche Mathematiker Vereinigung, the Circolo Matematico di Palermo, the Comite de Patronage de l'Enseignement Mathematique, and the British Mathematical Association (honorary). He was an early member of the New York Mathematical Society (1893).
He had skill as a raconteur, whether on the lecture platform or in his home, where he entertained extensively.
He was twice married: on January 19, 1887, to Fanny Taylor of Cortland, New York, who died in 1928; and, late in his life (November 5, 1940), to Eva May Luse, with whom he had collaborated earlier on textbooks.
