Robert W. Smith is a scholar of history and the classics at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

, and he directed the Science, Technology and Society Program in the Faculty of Arts. He researches the history of big science, especially U.S. technology and the history of spaceflight. He wrote ''The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA'', ''Science, Technology and Politics'' and he co-edited ''Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years After the Soviet Satellite''. He served as the Walter Hines Page Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina in 1993–94. He held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the U.S.

National Air and Space Museum The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the Smithsonian Institution is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States, dedicated to history of aviation, human flight and space exploration. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, ...

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

during the academic year 2006–07. He is interested in the technology and politics of the

James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, Lis ...

. In 2020 he was awarded the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for his histories of the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the Orbiting Solar Observatory, first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ...

and the planned

References

Living people Canadian male non-fiction writers Historians of aviation Academic staff of the University of Alberta 20th-century Canadian male writers 21st-century Canadian male writers 20th-century Canadian historians 21st-century Canadian historians Year of birth missing (living people) {{Canada-historian-stub