Background
Smith was born in Leicester to John Bardell Smith, an engineer, and Ada Smith (née Horrocks).
geneticist mathematician statistician
Smith was born in Leicester to John Bardell Smith, an engineer, and Ada Smith (née Horrocks).
He was educated at Wyggeston Boys" School (now Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College) until 1929, when the family moved to London. He graduated in the Mathematical Tripos, with a First in Participant II in 1937 and a Distinction in Participant III in 1938. Following graduation he began postgraduate research, taking his Doctor of Philosophy in 1942.
The group studied dissections of rectangles into squares, especially the "perfect" squared square, a square that is divided into a number of smaller squares, no two of which are the same size.
His education continued at Bec School, Tooting, for three years, then at University College School, London. In 1935, although having failed his Higher School Certificate, he was awarded an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge. Together they tackled a number of problems in the mathematical field of combinatorics and devised an imaginary mathematician, "Blanche Descartes", under which name to publish their work.
Publications under the name of "Blanche Descartes" or "F. de Carteblanche" continued to appear into the 1980s.
The group also published more mainstream articles under their own names, the final one being R.L. Brooks, C.A.B. Smith, Ampere-hour Stone and West.T. Tutte, "Determinants and current flows in electric networks", Discrete Mathematics, Volume 100 (1992).
During, as a Quaker and conscientious objector, Smith joined the Friends Relief Service.
He worked as a hospital porter at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Smith’s pacifist views saw him develop an interest in peace studies.
In 1946 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer at the Galton Laboratory at University College London.
He remained at University College London for the rest of his career, becoming successively Lecturer and Reader, before appointment as Weldon Professor of Biometry in 1964. On his arrival at University College London, Smith was influenced by J. B. South. Haldane, who introduced him to problems of linkage in human genetics in which field he was able to bring his skills as a statistician to bear. He invented some of the mathematical methods used to map human genes.
Smith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1945.
They had one son, who survived them. Piri"s father, Doctor Paul Vermes (1897–1968), was a Hungarian refugee who became a professional mathematician at the age of 50.
Among other responsibilities for the Society of Friends, he was a member of the Quaker Peace Studies Trust which established the chair of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. He was a member of the Genetical Society (serving as Treasurer), the International Biometric Society (British Region), serving as President 1971–1972, and the International Statistical Institute. He was a member of the advisory committee to the Anti-Concorde Project.