Photographs from the Papers of Charles Phelps Smyth

Charles Phelps Smyth was born in Clinton, New York on February 10, 1895. He received his bachelors and masters degrees from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University where he studied under the Nobel laureate Theodore W. Richards. Smyth served in the National Bureau of Standards and the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I, and from 1920 to 1963 he was a faculty member in the Princeton Department of Chemistry. His field of interest was dielectrics and atomic structure. During World War II, Smyth worked on the Manhattan Project, mostly from Princeton. At the end of the war he was sent to Germany as a member of the Office of Scientific Research and Development's ALSOS Mission to locate and secure scientists and equipment involved with Germany’s uranium (nuclear energy) efforts. Smyth received the Medal of Freedom in 1947, the ACS Nichols Medal in 1954 and in 1955 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He served as a consultant to the Office of Naval Research from 1963-1969 and 1971-1978. Smyth died in Bozeman, Montana on March 3, 1990.