John Smith (anatomist and chemist)

John Smith (1721–1797)^[1] was a Scottish physician and academic.^[2]

Smith was born in Maybole, Scotland, where his father, William, was a merchant.^[1][3] He studied at the University of Glasgow beginning in 1736, entered Balliol College, Oxford in 1744 with the support of the Snell Exhibition, and earned a B.A. in 1748 and an M.A. in 1751 from Balliol.^[1][3] He then studied under Nathan Alcock in St Mary Hall, earning his doctorate in 1757.^[1][4] Alcock left Oxford for Bath in the same year, and Smith took his place.^[4][5] At Oxford, he taught anatomy and chemistry.^[2][5] Despite not being a mathematician, he held the Savilian chair of geometry from 1766 until his death in 1797.^[2]

References

1. Beattie, James (1946), James Beattie's London Diary, 1773, Issue 122, The University Press, p. 131.
2. Fauvel, John; Flood, Raymond; Wilson, Robin (2013), Oxford Figures: Eight Centuries of the Mathematical Sciences, Oxford University Press, p. 185, ISBN 9780199681976.
3. Addison, William Innes (1901), The Snell exhibitions: From the University of Glasgow to Balliol college, Oxford, J. MacLehose & sons, p. 45, ISBN 9780259730767.
4. Brooke, Christopher Nugent Lawrence (1988), Oxford and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 241, ISBN 9780521301398.
5. Williams, Robert Joseph Paton; Chapman, Allan; Rowlinson, John Shipley (2009), Chemistry at Oxford: A History from 1600 to 2005, Royal Society of Chemistry, p. 64, ISBN 9780854041398.