Cedric Smith (statistician)

Cedric Austen Bardell Smith (5 February 1917 – 10 January 2002) was a British statistician and geneticist. Smith was born in Leicester to John Bardell Smith, a mechanical 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. 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. He graduated in the Mathematical Tripos, with a First in Part II in 1937 and a Distinction in Part III in 1938. Following graduation he began postgraduate research, taking his Ph.D. in 1942.

While a student at Cambridge, Smith became close friends with three other students at Trinity College, R. L. Brooks, A. H. Stone and W. T. Tutte. 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. 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. 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, A.H. Stone and W.T. Tutte, 'Determinants and current flows in electric networks', Discrete Math., Vol. 100 (1992).

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