Michael Smith (Chemist)

He married Helen Wood Christie in 1960. The couple had three children and later separated in 1983. He eventually became involved with Elizabeth Raines in a romantic relationship.

Michael Smith died on October 4, 2000, at the age of 68.

Michael Smith was born on 26 April 1932 in Blackpool, England, to Mary Agnes Smith and Rowland Smith. Both of his parents were hard working people of humble origins.

He had his early schooling at the local school, Marton Moss Church of England School. In 1943 he appeared for the “Elevenplus" examination which was used in the English schools in those days. The students who cleared the examination became eligible to receive a scholarship for academic education. Being from a modest background, it was Smith’s only option to avail higher schooling.

He cleared the examination and was admitted to the prestigious Arnold School on a scholarship. It was here that he realized his deep love for chemistry. During his schooling he also became a boy scout. As a young boy he witnessed the horrors of the World War II wrecking havoc in England even though his own family stayed at a relatively safe place.

He desired to go to Oxford or Cambridge but could not do so because of his lack of proficiency in Latin. However, he managed to get admitted to the chemistry honors program at the University of Manchester in 1950 with the financial support of a Blackpool Education Committee Scholarship. He graduated in 1953.

With the help of another State Scholarship, he finished his PhD degree in 1956 under the supervision of the outstanding organic chemist H.B. Henbest. His work focused on cyclohexane diols and his thesis was titled ‘Studies in the stereochemistry of diols and their derivatives.’

After completing his doctorate he received a post-doctoral fellowship at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver, Canada. There he worked under the supervision of Har Gobind Khorana who was developing new techniques of synthesizing nucleotides.

By that time DNA had been identified as the genetic material of a cell, and Khorana and his team were investigating how DNA encoded the proteins that constituted an organism. Smith’s first project was to develop a general, efficient procedure for the chemical synthesis of nucleoside-5' triphosphates based on the synthesis of ATP by Khorana.

In 1960, Khorana moved to the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Smith followed suit. Here Smith worked on the synthesis of ribo-oligonucleotides. The laboratory had excellent facilities but he was not happy and looked for a move.

In 1961, he accepted a position with the Fisheries Research Board of Canada Laboratory in Vancouver where he worked for five years. In 1966, he was offered the position of Medical Research Associate of the Medical Research Council of Canada, which he gladly accepted.

Throughout these years, his research was primarily focused on the synthesis of olgonucleotides and the characterization of their properties. A sabbatical at the University of Cambridge in England with Fred Sanger provided Smith with the opportunity to conduct significant research on genes and genomes and methods of sequencing large DNA molecules. This helped to establish him as one of the leading molecular biologists in the world.

Michael Smith is best remembered for his work on Site-directed mutagenesis, a molecular biology method that is used to make specific and intentional changes to the DNA sequence of a gene and any gene products. His particular technique can be used to modify nucleotide sequences at specific, desired locations within a gene, and this has opened up newer practical applications of the technique in medicine, agriculture, and industry.