Background

Ethnicity: Smith's father was a native of England who later emigrated to Australia.

Grafton Elliot Smith was born on August 15, 1871 in Grafton, Australia. He was the son of Stephen Sheldrick Smith, a schoolteacher, and of his wife, Mary Jane Evans.

Education

At school Smith was interested in both physics and medicine, and he dated his interest in the brain to the age of ten, when he dissected a shark. He read medicine at the University of Sydney, graduated Bachelor of Medicine, Master of Surgery in 1892, and took some clinical posts while beginning research on brains. In 1895 Elliot Smith was awarded a Doctor of Medicine degree and gold medal for a thesis on the anatomy and histology of the cerebrum of the nonplacental mammal. In 1896 he went to England, where he continued research for a Ph.D. at Cambridge and in 1899 was elected a fellow of St. John’s College.

Career

Smith was asked to help in preparing a catalog of brains of Reptilia and Mammalia in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons; this was published in 1902.

Smith was invited to be professor of anatomy in the new Government School of Medicine in Cairo and went there in 1900 to create an active department and continue his neurological work. In spite of an early determination to resist the lure of Egyptology, he became interested when he was asked to make anatomical investigations of old skeletons and mummies, particularly when there were remains of soft parts, including brains. These investigations led to the Catalogue of the Royal Mummies in the Cairo Museum, published in 1912. In 1907 he was appointed anatomical adviser to the Archaeological Survey of Nubia, which involved examination and description of thousands of skeletons excavated before the Aswan Dam was raised. The report was published in 1910.

Returning to England in 1909 to occupy the chair of anatomy at Manchester, Smith continued to work on both neurology and the Nubian remains and developed his theory of the diffusion of culture, which has never been generally accepted by anthropologists. He was one of several experts deceived by the Piltdown skull. During World War I, Smith worked for short periods in hospitals and did research on shell shock, and in 1919 he transferred to the chair of anatomy at University College, London, where he emphasized the importance of studying human biology with its psychological and cultural aspects, and also the history of medicine. He traveled frequently to the United States, China, and Australia, mainly on anthropological work, and trained several assistants who were later prominent anthropologists.

Achievements

• The weight of Grafton Elliot Smith’s work lies in his anatomical studies. His detailed comparative anatomical descriptions of the brains of reptiles and nonplacental and placental mammals contributed to the study of evolution as well as to neurology, and he related the development of the visual area of the brain to arboreal life in primates. His descriptions of Egyptian mummies were the first to be so comprehensive and so detailed; many of them are not yet superseded.
  
  Some of his manuscripts are at the University of Manchester, and a bronze head, done by A. H. Gerrard in 1937, is in the Medical Sciences Library of University College, London.
  
  In 1912 he received the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, in 1930 the Honorary Gold Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1936 the Huxley Memorial Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
  
  He was knighted in 1934.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Evolution of the Dragon

    (This is a set of three connected essays on the symbolism ...)

    1919
  • Egyptian Mummies 1924
  • The diffusion of culture 1933
  • The Influence Of Ancient Egyptian Civilization In The East And In America 1916
  • The Migrations of Early Culture 1915
  • Human history 1930
  • Elephants and Ethnologists 1924
  • Shell Shock and Its Lessons 1917
  • Tutankhamen and the Discovery of His Tomb by the Late Earl of Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter 1923
  • The Neural Basis Of Thought 1934

Views

Smith believed in the idea that cultural innovations occur only once and that they spread geographically. Based on this, he traced the origins of many cultural and traditional practices across the world, including the New World, to ideas that he believed came from Egypt and in some instances from Asia.

Membership

In 1907 Smith was elected to fellowship of the Royal Society.

• 

  Royal Society , United Kingdom

  1907

Connections

Smith married Kathleen Macredie in 1900; they had three sons. His youngest son, Stephen Smith, died in an accident in 1936.

Father:

Stephen Sheldrick Smith

Mother:

Mary Jane Evans

Spouse:

Kathleen Macredie

Son:

Stephen Smith

Brother:

Stephen H. Smith

Brother:

Stewart Arthur Smith

References

• Sir Grafton Elliot Smith
  1938