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Sydney Alfred Smith


Sir Sydney Alfred Smith CBE (4 August 1883 in Roxburgh, New Zealand – 8 May 1969 in Edinburgh, Scotland), was a renowned forensic scientist and pathologist. From 1928 to 1953, Smith was Regius Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, a well-known forensic department of that time. Smith's popular 1959 autobiography, Mostly Murder, has run through many British and American editions, the latest in 1988.

Smith was born at Roxburgh, Otago, in New Zealand and was educated at Roxburgh public school, and Victoria College, Wellington. He later won a Vans Dunlop scholarship at Edinburgh University in botany and zoology. He graduated in 1912, M.B. Ch.B., with first-class honours and a research scholarship. 55

Following a short period in general practice, Smith became an assistant in the Edinburgh department of forensic medicine at the suggestion of Professor Harvey Littlejohn. He obtained his M.D. in 1914 with a gold medal and the Alison Prize.

Smith returned to New Zealand in 1914 and took up a post as Medical Officer of Health for Otago at Dunedin. During World War I, Smith served as a major in the New Zealand Army Corps. In 1917, Smith took up a post as medico-legal advisor to the Government of Egypt and senior lecturer in forensic medicine at the School of Medicine in Cairo. Smith went on to establish himself as an authority in the field of ballistics and firearms in forensic medicine, publishing the first edition of Textbook of Forensic Medicine in 1925.


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