Charles Phelps Smyth

Charles Phelps "Charlie" Smyth (; February 10, 1895 – March 18, 1990) was an American chemist. He was educated at Princeton University and Harvard University. From 1920 to 1963 he was a faculty member in the Princeton Department of Chemistry, and from 1963 to 1970 he was a consultant to the Office of Naval Research. He was awarded the Nichols Medal by the New York Section of the American Chemical Society in 1954.

During World War I he worked in the National Bureau of Standards and the Chemical Warfare Service, and during World War II he worked on the Manhattan Project and Operation Alsos. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1947 for the last.

Biography

Smyth was born February 10, 1895, in Clinton, New York, to Ruth Anne Phelps and Charles Henry Smyth Jr., a professor of geology at Hamilton College. Woodrow Wilson, then President of Princeton University, convinced Smyth ''pére'' to join the faculty at Princeton, and in 1905 the family moved to Princeton, New Jersey.

Charles Phelps Smyth and his younger brother, Henry DeWolf Smyth, attended the same primary and secondary schools. The younger brother also received undergraduate and master's degrees from Princeton, but in physics, and became a Princeton faculty member like Charles Phelps Smyth and their father. Both brothers served in the Chemical Warfare Service in World War I and on the Manhattan Project.

In 1955 he married Emily Ellen Vezin. His 1990 ''The New York Times'' obituary mentions his wife but does not mention children.

Education

In Princeton, Charles Phelps Smyth attended Miss Fine's School, which later became the Princeton Day School, and the Lawrenceville School. He then entered Princeton as an undergraduate, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree ''summa cum laude'' in 1916 and remained at Princeton to obtain a Master of Arts degree in 1917.

During World War I, he served in the National Bureau of Standards, where he worked on electroplating, and the Chemical Warfare Service, where he worked on poison gas. After the war, in 1921, he received a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard. Theodore William Richards advised him in his dissertation on thallium amalgam.

Academic career

Smyth was appointed an instructor at Princeton in 1920; he taught a freshman chemistry laboratory class there while finishing his Harvard dissertation. He was made an assistant professor in 1923, an associate professor in 1927, a full professor in 1938, and the David B. Jones Professor of Chemistry in 1958. He retired from Princeton in 1963. From 1963 to 1978 he was involved with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) as a consultant and, in 1969 and 1970, served as the ONR's liaison scientist in London.

Smyth's research was in chemical physics, specifically on dielectric properties of matter. An early discovery on dipole moment proved correct August Kekulé's conjecture on the structure of benzene. His collaborators at Princeton included Karl Taylor Compton. Smyth mentored over 50 doctoral students, including William O. Baker. He published two books and over 300 research articles. He was an associate editor of the ''Journal of Chemical Physics

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