Famous N.Z. Scientist Was Also Detective

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31985, 12 May 1969, Page 14

Famous N.Z. Scientist Was Also Detective

Professor Sir Sydney Alfred Smith, the worldfamous New Zealand scientistdetective, died in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Thursday. He was aged 85. Sir Sydney Smith was Regius professor of forensic medicine at Edinburgh University from 1928 to 1953, dean of the faculty of medicine from 1931 to 1953 and rector from 1954 to 1957. He was knighted in 1949. His medical evidence helped to convict dozens of murderers. When he was professor of forensic medicine his department used to deal with more than 1000 murder cases a year.

Like Sherlock Holmes, Sir Sydney Smith believed in the power of observation plus a wide range of exact knowledge.

“No man,” he would say, “can enter or leave a place without leaving signs as powerfully full of proof as fingerprints. Find these signs and you have your man." Following this principle, the scientist from Roxburgh, Otago, built forensic medicine into a vital crime-fighting weapon.

As a young man he became world-famous almost overnight by his methods of identifying bullets fired from specific guns. His evidence based on these techniques helped in the conviction of the assassins of Sir Lee Stack Pasha, GovernorGeneral of the Sudan, in 1924. One of Sir Sydney Smith’s greatest triumphs occurred in Australia. He was on a visit in 1928 when he was called in on the renowned case in which a human arm had been found in a Sydney shark aquarium.

He proved that the arm had been cut, not bitten off, and thus helped to establish that it came from a murdered victim. Sir Sydney Smith wrote one of the best-known books on the subject he made his own —“A Text Book On Forensic Medicine.” He was also the editor of Taylor's “Principles and Practice in Medical Jurisprudence.” In 1960 he wrote a best seller called “Mostly Murder,” an autobiography recounting many of his experiences.

Educated in Roxburgh, Sir Sydney Smith became apprenticed to a chemist, but left to work in a gold dredge on the Chitha River. He later passed his pharmacy examinations in Dun-

edin and became a dispenser at Wellington Hospital while studying part-time at Victoria University College. Paying a third-class fare to Britain, he continued his studies at Edinburgh and graduated with flying colours. After serving with the New Zealand Medical Corps during the First World War, he worked for 11 years as a forensic scientist with the Egyptian Government before taking up the chair of forensic medicine at Edinburgh. Sir Sydney Smith's Scottishborn wife died in 1962. He is survived by a son, who is an author and painter in Edinburgh, and a married daughter, who is a doctor in Canada.