Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr. (born August 24, 1940) is an

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

alumnus who was chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) from 2001 to 2002 and president of the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Art ...

(ISO) from 2003 to 2004. In 2011, ''

American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

'' admitted his decapitalized surname, smoot, meaning a distance of , as one of the 10,000 new words added to their fifth edition. The term is named for Smoot from his undergraduate days when he was used as a

unit of measure A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. Any other quantity of that kind can be expressed as a multi ...

on the

Harvard Bridge The Harvard Bridge (also known locally as the MIT Bridge, the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge, and the "Mass. Ave." Bridge) is a steel haunched girder bridge carrying Massachusetts Avenue ( Route 2A) over the Charles River and connecting Back Bay, ...

at MIT during a fraternity pledge activity.

Early life and education

Smoot was born August 24, 1940 in Bexar County, Texas. He attended

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...

, where he was a member of

Lambda Chi Alpha Lambda Chi Alpha (), commonly known as Lambda Chi, is a college fraternity in North America which was founded at Boston University in 1909. It is one of the largest social fraternities in North America, with more than 300,000 lifetime members a ...

fraternity and obtained a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

in 1962. He then attended

Georgetown University Law Center The Georgetown University Law Center (Georgetown Law) is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, where he obtained his JD.

Career

From 2000–2005, he served as vice president for external voluntary standards relations of the

Information Technology Industry Council The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) is a Washington, D.C.-based global trade association that represents companies from the information and communications technology (ICT) industry. As an advocacy organization, ITI works to influenc ...

(ITI). Prior to that, he was ITI's executive vice president for 23 years. Smoot gave a speech to a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology's Subcommittee on Technology on March 20, 2000, titled "The Role of Technical Standards in Today's Society and in the Future". He returned to MIT on October 4, 2008, for a 50th anniversary celebration, including the installation of a plaque on the bridge. Smoot was also presented with an official unit of measurement: a smoot stick. On May 7, 2016, he served as the grand marshal of the parade marking the centenary of MIT's moving from Boston's Back Bay into Cambridge.

Personal life

Smoot lives in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...

with his spouse Sandra Smoot. He is also a representative of the MIT Education Council. He has two sons, both of whom also attended MIT. Smoot is a distant relative of Senator

Reed Smoot Reed Smoot (January 10, 1862February 9, 1941) was an American politician, businessman, and apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). First elected by the Utah State Legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1902, he serv ...

References

External links

* * * *
"Someone San Diego show know"
''

San Diego Tribune ''The San Diego Union-Tribune'' is a metropolitan daily newspaper published in San Diego, California, that has run since 1868. Its name derives from a 1992 merger between the two major daily newspapers at the time, ''The San Diego Union'' and ...

'', October 9, 2020 {{DEFAULTSORT:Smoot, Oliver 1940 births Living people Georgetown University Law Center alumni Lambda Chi Alpha Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni