Harry Smith (19 September 1935 – 9 February 2015) was a British botanist. Smith is best known for his discovery that

phytochrome Phytochromes are a class of photoreceptor in plants, bacteria and fungi used to detect light. They are sensitive to light in the red and far-red region of the visible spectrum and can be classed as either Type I, which are activated by far-re ...

s can detect changes in the colour that plants receive (e.g., because of shading from neighbouring plants), which allows them to adjust their growth rates accordingly. Smith was the founding editor of the academic journal ''

Molecular Ecology Molecular ecology is a field of evolutionary biology that is concerned with applying molecular population genetics, molecular phylogenetics, and more recently genomics to traditional ecological questions (e.g., species diagnosis, conservation and ...

'', and its managing editor from 1992 to 2008. He was also the founding editor of the journals '' Molecular Ecology Resources'', ''

Global Change Biology ''Global Change Biology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on the interface between biological systems and all aspects of environmental change that affect a substantial part of the globe including climate change, glo ...

'', and '' Plant, Cell & Environment''. In 2000, Smith was elected as a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

(FRS).

References

1935 births 2015 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society British botanists Alumni of the University of Manchester {{UK-botanist-stub