Robert H. Smellie papers

Robert H. Smellie, Jr. (pronounced Smylie) was born in Glasgow, Scotland on June 2, 1920, and moved to the United States in 1928. A longtime resident of Hartford, Connecticut, Smellie attended Hartford Public High School and was an accomplished violinist preparing for his concert debut. But Smellie’s love for science prevailed, and he attended Trinity College in Hartford, where he received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Chemistry in 1942 and 1944, respectively. As an undergraduate, Smellie lettered in cross country and track and set a new freshman record in the half mile run. He was president of his junior class and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. As a graduate student, Smellie worked with Dr. Vernon Krieble in the field of organic acids, their research having led to three joint patents.

In 1944 Smellie was to have joined the Navy, but a telephone call from the Eastman Kodak Company changed his trajectory and Smellie went to work from 1944 to 1946 on The Manhattan Project at Eastman’s uranium processing plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. As analytical supervisor, Smellie oversaw the operations of five laboratories analyzing samples of materials that led to the development of the atom bomb. While at Eastman, Smellie met and married his wife, Dorothy, a school teacher also employed in the laboratories there.

Trinity College hired Smellie in 1948, where he worked for thirty-seven years as a professor, department head, and ultimately, Scovill Professor of Chemistry, until his retirement in 1985. During his tenure at Trinity, Smellie introduced a new course in Instrumental Analysis, giving Trinity small-college leadership in the field at that time. He also supervised high school students studying in Trinity’s laboratories in a summer program designed to increase interest in the field of science. In 1951, Smellie received a doctoral degree in Chemistry from Columbia University in New York. He also worked with colleagues at Columbia University as acting director on a project for the Atomic Energy Commission. As a result of this work, Smellie and his colleagues published thirty papers in the field of sulphur colloids, which was Smellie’s area of research interest.

Smellie’s career also included work as a consultant for IBM and as a director and consultant for The Rolfite Company of Stamford, Connecticut, where he served from its founding in the late 1960s until 1981. From 1954 until 1963, Smellie served as a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Colloid Science. In 1970, he helped develop a substance to significantly reduce fuel oil pollution. In 1983, Smellie was chairman and organizer of a symposium on “Energy and Fuels” at the Northeast Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society, where he co-presented a paper, “The Potential for Combustion Improvement with Manganese Catalysts.” Other accolades include the Trinity Club’s “Man of the Year” award in 1961 and Trinity College’s Alumni Medal for Excellence in 1962.

Robert H. Smellie, Jr. died in 1997 at the age of 75. He had two daughters and a son.