Born in
Norwalk, Connecticut, he earned his
A.B. degree from
Haverford College in biology, was a high school teacher and lab technician for a year, and earned his
PhD degree in bacteriology and immunology from
Harvard University.[6] He was a postdoc at the
University of Wisconsin (with future Nobel laureate
Oliver Smithies) before moving to Columbia, Missouri and joining the University of Missouri faculty in 1975. He spent the 1983–1984 academic year at
Duke University with Robert Webster where he began the work that led to him being awarded a Nobel Prize.[7][8][9][2][10]
He is best known for
phage display, a technique where a specific
protein sequence is artificially inserted into the
coat protein gene of a
bacteriophage, causing the protein to be expressed on the outside of the bacteriophage. Smith first described the technique in 1985 when he displayed
peptides on
filamentous phage by fusing the peptide of interest onto gene III of filamentous phage.[8] He was awarded the 2018
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work, sharing his prize with
Greg Winter and
Frances Arnold.
Human rights advocacy
Smith is an advocate for equal rights for Palestinians and Israeli Jews in their common homeland, and a strong supporter of the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.[11] On the topic of religion, Smith is quoted as saying "I'm not religious or Jewish by birth. But my wife is Jewish and our sons are bar-mitzvahed, and I'm very engaged with Jewish culture and politics."[12]
Awards and honors
2000 University of Missouri Curators' Professor[13]