Cedric Austen Bardell Smith (5 February 1917 – 10 January 2002) was a British

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

and geneticist. Smith was born in

Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...

. He was the younger son of John Bardell Smith (1876–1950), a mechanical engineer, and Ada (''née'' Horrocks; 1876–1969). He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys until 1929, when the family moved to London. His education continued at Bec School, Tooting, for three years, then at University College School, London. In 1935, although having failed his Higher School Certificate, he was awarded an

exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibition ...

to Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated in the Mathematical Tripos, with a First in Part II in 1937 and a Distinction in Part III in 1938. Following graduation he began postgraduate research, taking his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in 1942.

Work on combinatorics

While a student at Cambridge, Smith became close friends with three other students at Trinity College, R. L. Brooks, A. H. Stone and

W. T. Tutte William Thomas Tutte OC FRS FRSC (; 14 May 1917 – 2 May 2002) was an English and Canadian codebreaker and mathematician. During the Second World War, he made a brilliant and fundamental advance in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, a majo ...

. Together they tackled a number of problems in the mathematical field of

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many appl ...

and devised an imaginary mathematician, '

Blanche Descartes Blanche Descartes was a collaborative pseudonym used by the English mathematicians R. Leonard Brooks, Arthur Harold Stone, Cedric Smith, and W. T. Tutte. The four mathematicians met in 1935 as undergraduate students at Trinity College, Cambridge, ...

', under which name to publish their work. The group studied dissections of rectangles into squares, especially the 'perfect'

squared square Squaring the square is the problem of tiling an integral square using only other integral squares. (An integral square is a square whose sides have integer length.) The name was coined in a humorous analogy with squaring the circle. Squaring the ...

, a square that is divided into a number of smaller squares, no two of which are the same size. Publications under the name of 'Blanche Descartes' or 'F. de Carteblanche' continued to appear into the 1980s. The group also published more mainstream articles under their own names, the final one being R.L. Brooks, C.A.B. Smith, A.H. Stone and W.T. Tutte, 'Determinants and current flows in electric networks', Discrete Math., Vol. 100 (1992).

World War II

During World War II, as a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

and

conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...

, Smith joined the Friends Relief Service; he worked as a

hospital porter Hospital porters are employed to move patients between wards and departments and to move goods and vital supplies including medical equipment, linen, blood, and samples. This is generally not regarded as skilled work, it attracts little attention a ...

at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. Smith's pacifist views saw him develop an interest in peace studies. Among other responsibilities for the

Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

, he was a member of the Quaker Peace Studies Trust which established the chair of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. Smith was also a founder member (and Chairman) of the Conflict Research Society.

Post-war career

In 1946 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer at the Galton Laboratory at University College London. He remained at UCL for the rest of his career, becoming successively Lecturer and Reader, before appointment as Weldon Professor of Biometry in 1964. On his arrival at UCL, Smith was influenced by J. B. S. Haldane, who introduced him to problems of linkage in human genetics in which field he was able to bring his skills as a statistician to bear. He invented some of the mathematical methods used to map human genes. In 1955, he invented the "gene counting" method of inferring gene frequencies from the frequencies of genotypes in populations. This was an early example of the EM Algorithm, over 20 years before its introduction by Dempster, Laird and Rubin. He gave a more general discussion of the gene-counting method and its statistical properties in 1957. Smith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1945. He was a member of the Genetical Society (serving as Treasurer), the International Biometric Society (British Region), serving as President 1971–1972, and the

International Statistical Institute The International Statistical Institute (ISI) is a professional association of statisticians. It was founded in 1885, although there had been international statistical congresses since 1853. The institute has about 4,000 elected members from gov ...

Other interests

He was a member of the advisory committee to the Anti-Concorde Project.

Family

In 1957 he married Piroska Vermes (1921–2000), known as 'Piri'. They had one son, who survived them."Cedric Smith" (obituary), ''The Times'', 21 February 2002. Piri's father, Dr. Paul Vermes (1897–1968), was a Hungarian refugee who became a professional mathematician at the age of 50.

References

* The Detection of Linkage in Human Genetics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), Vol. 15, No. 2. (1953), pp. 153–192.

External links

E. Thompson: "1953 An unrecognized summit in human genetic linkage analysis"
(abstract)
E. Thompson: "1953 An unrecognized summit in human genetic linkage analysis"
(paper)
Catalogue of the Smith papers held at UCL Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Cedric Austen Bardell 1917 births 2002 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Modern synthesis (20th century) People from Leicester British conscientious objectors Biostatisticians English geneticists English statisticians 20th-century English mathematicians Academics of University College London People educated at University College School People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys British Quakers