by Mike Bruton
Smith played rugby for Selwyn College and participated in many social activities at Cambridge. He travelled widely in Britain and continental Europe, where he learned to speak German (and some Italian) and made many scientific contacts. He also indulged his hobby of fly fishing and bought a motorbike to take him to his favourite fishing haunts. During this time he realised that, despite his ‘English upbringing’, he was a true South African and proud to be one (Smith, 1956; Bell, 1969). In later years his patriotic zeal would affect many of the decisions he made. As Shirley Bell (1969) later wrote, ‘… his deep love of South Africa shines through his writing like a warm, glowing light’.
JLB Smith trout fishing in the River Dee in England, ca 1921.
In late 1922 he returned to the Union of South Africa to accept a temporary appointment in the Chemistry Department at Rhodes University College (RUC) in Grahamstown, which was headed at the time by the legendary Sir George Edward Cory (1862–1935). Cory had triumphed over extreme hardship and a difficult upbringing to become first a schoolmaster and then (in 1904) one of the four founding professors of RUC (Shell, 2017). Like Smith, he had a strong interest in a field – in his case, South African history – unrelated to his main academic discipline and would ultimately take early retirement from academia in order to pursue it.
JLB Smith and the motorbike on which he went sightseeing and fly fishing while studying at Cambridge University in the early 1920s.
Some of the excitement generated by research being done overseas at this time in the field of chemistry was conveyed to Grahamstown by Cory in a series of public lectures. According to Michael Brown, who became Professor of Physical Chemistry at Rhodes University in 1986, his lectures were always well illustrated by ‘clever and brilliant experiments’ and he was a popular and fascinating presenter.1
Sir George Cory, Professor of Chemistry at Rhodes University College, in 1923.
On his appointment as Head of Chemistry at RUC, Cory worked hard at setting up the department during the day but pursued his historical research after hours. As in Smith’s case, his hobby became an all-consuming passion. His field work was carried out on foot and he undertook epic walking tours of the Eastern Cape during the university holidays to do interviews and gather material for this historical research, somewhat reminiscent of JLB’s epic East African fish-research expeditions in the 1940s and 1950s.
Sir George Cory in field gear, on the cover of Sandra Shell’s book, Protean Paradox.
When Cory’s assistant, RA Page, took six months’ leave in 1923, JLB Smith was appointed as Page’s leave replacement to the post of Lecturer (RUC Council; MS 16,911). Cory initially formed a very positive impression of Smith. ‘He was an excellent teacher in all branches, but especially in Organic. We got on very well to start with. I thought he was so good and would be such an acquisition to the College, that I worked hard to keep him on permanently after Page came back. It was a bit of a fight as the College was very disinclined to increase the staff. However, in the end it was done’ (Cory, 1922/23; Shell, 2017). On 11th April 1924, the Senate approved Smith’s promotion to Senior Lecturer on Cory’s recommendation. Soon Smith had gained a reputation as ‘a brilliant if irascible teacher’; he liked students who worked hard but cared little for those who did not. He was considered to be ‘extraordinarily gifted’ and ‘endowed with a photographic memory’ (Maylam, 2017). ‘His students still remember his quick movements, the measured, almost pedantic way he delivered his lectures, and his habit of not looking directly at whoever was talking, then swinging round suddenly to hold the speaker in a penetrating stare’ (Weinberg, 1999).
But Smith was soon at loggerheads with the ‘Old Guard’, including Cory, who had graduated to chairs in the university college from being teachers, and looked askance at research work. One of the turning points probably came when Smith refused to spend his own time washing up students’ lab apparatus at the end of the year, but offered to pay an unskilled person to do his share (MM Smith, 1979). This style was quite unlike that of Cory, who wrote in his unpublished ‘Recollections’, ‘I had to do all the “bottle-washing” and in fact all the cleaning of the place except the actual sweeping. But I liked doing it – and always felt proud of the place when it looked in order’ (Cory, 1922/23; Shell, 2017).
After JLB’s permanent appointment had been confirmed, his sometimes abrasive and wilful personality started to create tension in the Chemistry Department (Shell, 2017). According to Cory (1922/23), Smith dedicated his time to his six students to the exclusion of all else, had scant regard for the needs of others in the Department, and made arbitrary decisions for the scheduling of his classes (Shell, 2017).
In ‘Recollections’, from which Sandra Shell drew much of the material for her biography, Cory states:
‘He had his laboratory down stairs. He helped himself liberally to all apparatus and materials from above, without any consideration [for] what inconvenience he was causing us. Page got very angry. One day I went down to Smith’s place and found it locked up and no students. On enquiries I found that, in the middle of term – he had given them four days’ holiday. Of course I expostulated with him and told him that even I had no authority to do such a thing without the sanction of Senate. It was getting quite impossible to work with him’.
One wonders where they went fishing?
Cory was himself cantankerous and explosive if challenged or crossed, and was not afraid of public confrontations (Shell, 2017). He resigned his professorship in chemistry well ahead of his retirement date – as Smith would later do on account of his own conflicting interests – to pursue his historical research. Cory served on the committee that appointed his own successor and opposed Smith’s candidature, later writing:
‘On the whole he made things very unpleasant. When I resigned and was on the committee to choose a successor, Smith was a candidate. I opposed it. He was young – about 26. There could be no question about his ability as a teacher but he seemed so irresponsible, that I was not going to take the responsibility of recommending him for the management of the department. He did not get the post. He was very wrath and wrote to me a very insulting letter. A Dr Barker was put in – a first class man’ (Shell, 2017).
In the Senate minutes dated 1st July 1925 (RUC Senate Special Meeting) it is recorded that, ‘Professor Cory spoke in favour of the appointment of a Physical Chemist and warned the meeting against the appointment of Dr Smith on personal grounds’. No-one seems to have noticed that one of Cory’s arguments against Smith was his youth, yet Barker was four years younger than Smith. The only two members of the College Senate at the time with doctorates, Selmar Schonland, Head of Botany, and James Duerden, Head of Zoology, both fought bitterly to have Smith appointed to the Chair, but they were overruled, the excuse being that organic chemistry was a static subject of the past, with no future. How wrong they were!
Once Barker, the physical chemist, was appointed, Smith, the organic chemist, was expected to continue his teaching and research in organic chemistry. This setback upset Smith sufficiently to cause him to want to leave RUC. There are letters in the Rhodes University Archive that indicate that he unsuccessfully applied for the post of Chair of Chemistry at both Natal University College in Pietermaritzburg (in 1939) and the University College of the Orange Free State in Bloemfontein (in 1941) (Pote, 1997; Rhodes University Archive). Both these applications were made after the discovery of the first coelacanth so it seems that, even then, and somewhat surprisingly, his mind was still set on a career in chemistry. But the winds of change had started to blow and ultimately chemistry’s loss would prove to be ichthyology’s gain.
Cartoon by Boonzaier of Sir George Cory in Cape Town in the 1930s.
When Cory returned from six months’ leave in England he commented:
‘From all accounts he [Barker] does not have too good a time with Smith. Since my time, the place has been vastly improved – more rooms added and no expense spared in additional equipment. What a difference to the time I
started, with just one half assistant. Now a full professor at £800, Smith at £600, Dugmore at £400 and four assistants at £250 each or the equivalent in board etc.’ (Shell, 2017).
William Francis (‘Billy’) Barker was, of course, no slouch. When he was appointed to succeed Cory he was only 24 years old and had an excellent academic and research record. He served as Professor and Head of Chemistry at Rhodes University for 36½ years until his retirement in 1961.
Many years later, on 15th May 1968, Margaret Smith, JLB’s second wife, wrote to Shirley Bell, a family friend and editor whose magazine, Animals, had just been terminated by the publisher:
‘My experience in life has been that what at the time seems to be a dreadful catastrophe often turns out for the very best … The worst thing that ever happened to my husband was his not getting the Chair of Chemistry. He was in every way best qualified and a magnificent teacher, but local jealousy saw to it that an inferior man was placed over him. This nearly killed him, but it did turn him eventually into the Ichthyologist, and looking back we can see that this almost crushing blow to his pride and everything else was responsible for his becoming a world figure in another discipline. So don’t worry too much, just take things as they come and enjoy them while you have them.’
1Marguerite Poland (2008) captured Cory’s personality beautifully in her vivid history of St Andrew’s College. ‘Like a small, gleeful wizard he ensconced himself in the Gothic chemical laboratory, which stood on the lawn between Upper and Lower. Spirited, controversial, opinionated and as pugnacious as a terrier, George Cory presided over his bell jars and burners for the next ten years, his mortar board askew, his pince-nez glinting with fire’.
CHAPTER 4
Organic chemistry
Building a career in Grahamstown
DESPITE THIS setback, and his heavy teaching duties, JLB Smith continued to pursue his research interests in mustard gases and photosynthesising dyestuffs, and developed a new interest in the essential oils of indigenous South African plants. In July 1946 the British journal Nature reported that the Council of the Royal Society of South Africa had awarded the first Marloth Memorial Medal to JLB Smith and one of his students, DEA (Doug) Rivett, for a paper they had co-authored entitled, ‘The essential oil of Agathosma apiculata Meyer’, which had been published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa (Smith & Rivett, 1946).1 Agathosma apiculata is commonly known as buchu. It has aromatic leaves and a distinctive garlic scent is released when the leaves are crushed. It grows on granite as well as limestone soils in low-altitude coastal areas.
Professor DEA (Doug) Rivett.
In their paper Smith & Rivett (1946) state:
‘Prominent among the herbal remedies employed by the rural populace of South Africa are the various plants designated broadly as “Buchu”. Chiefly these are members of the large family Rutaceae, of which many representatives, chiefly endemic species and many endemic genera, occur in South Africa. One of the characters of this family is that all, or almost all, of the species secrete essential oil, usually concentrated in special glands in the leaf … Much of the reputed medicinal value of these plants is attributed to the essential oil they contain. Generally an infusion of the dried leaves is employed, and this from our observation may contain much or little of the oil according to the manner of its preparation. Since from our determinations it appears that the leaves always lose a considerable portion of the more volatile components of the oil in drying, it may be presumed that those … are not the portion of major clinical importance. It is possible that the pungent odour of the leaves and of the infusions prepared from them have in the case of some plants at least been responsible for inducing in the credulous an exaggerated belief in their curative properties.’
Smith and Rivett straddled the disciplines of organic chemistry, botany and indigenous knowledge in this important publication. Although they were healthily sceptical about the restorative properties of buchu infusions, they were at least aware of traditional uses of the plant. It took several decades more for others to realise the full potential of buchu.2
Doug Rivett was one of many organic chemists taught by JLB Smith who went on to achieve international acclaim. He first arrived at Rhodes University College (RUC) as an undergraduate student in 1939 and carried out his MSc research – on the sulphurous constituents of sea buchu – under the supervision of Smith. He completed his doctorate in organic chemistry at Cambridge University under the supervision of Nobel laureate, Lord Todd. After stints at Princeton and at the CSIR back in South Africa, and a mission at a top-secret chemical warfare facility in England, he returned to his alma mater in 1962 as a senior lecturer, eventually becoming Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1981. Like Cory before him, he enjoyed presenting ‘Chemistry Magic Shows’ to the next generation of young scientists.
In an obituary read at Doug’s memorial service on 30th January 2010 by Mike Davies-Coleman (pers. comm., 2017), many parallels between the characters of Rivett and Smith become apparent:
‘Doug was as straight as an arrow with no airs and graces. He was a doer and not a talker and he always judged people by what they did as opposed to what they said they would do. He did not tolerate fools and abhorred those who wasted time, especially in the laboratory. He had no interest whatsoever in scandal or petty politics. He was, however, a supportive mentor and a wise counsellor to young scientists of all generations and a most loyal and wonderful friend and colleague.’
Rivett’s unpublished personal recollections, written in May 2004 (to which the Rivett family gave access thanks to the kind intervention of Mike Davies-Coleman), give an indication of the high standard that Smith set in his chemistry teaching, and provide an insight into the close working relationship that JLB enjoyed with his students, and the kind of research that they jointly carried out:
‘But it was Dr JLB Smith, Senior Lecturer in Organic Chemistry, who really inspired me like no other. We did not have any organic chemistry in the first year and it was he who introduced us to this new branch of the subject. “Doc” Smith’s lectures were meticulously prepared and delivered. Periodically he would stop and ask the class a question to ensure that we were following what he said. He used a didactic approach to teaching and did not take kindly to too much disturbance. The underlying principles of organic chemistry were then poorly understood and one had to learn a large number of apparently unrelated reactions’ (Davies-Coleman, in litt., 2017).
‘“Doc” Smith was also in charge of the Chem II quantitative inorganic practicals. He was very particular about how we used the balances. Weights had to be meticulously set in decreasing order on the one pan and during titrations the burette taps had to be turned with the left hand while stirring the flask with the other. There was no talking so the atmosphere in the lab was rather strained but you did learn to concentrate in what you were doing. Amongst the experiments I particularly recall was the determination of the percentage silver in a tickey (3 penny piece) when you had to dissolve your own coin in nitric acid and then titrate the solution with standard sodium chloride solution. This experiment was definitely illegal, but interesting’ (Davies-Coleman, pers. comm., 2017).
‘During the third term he took us for Qualitative Organic Analysis using a book he had written [Smith, 1940a]. Unknown compounds were determined by a set procedure. Early on in this a sodium fusion was required to determine the presence of nitrogen, sulfur and halogens and he took great pains to show us how to carry out this potentially dangerous experiment efficiently and safely. Our compound was then separated into various groups, e.g. bases by solubility in mineral acid, etc. A final melting point for solids or boiling point for liquids confirmed the structure by consulting the literature.
‘I had decided to do my MSc thesis with “Doc” Smith, who wrote to me in the new year asking me to find out all I could about Agathosma apiculata, sea-buchu. Has its essential oil been investigated? Where does it grow? I consulted the University Library, and Botany department for bo
oks on essential oils and found that the essential oil of this plant had not been studied. … Agathosma apiculata was collected at the Kowie and steam-distilled. … The buchu oil I was preparing had a strong and unpleasant odour which soon permeated the chemistry building and surrounding areas. I used to change to a boiler-suit at work in an effort to keep the smell off my regular clothes. In later years when I met fellow-students they invariably pulled my leg regarding this smell and I became known as Buchu Rivett!
‘One Saturday afternoon in April, much to my surprise, I discovered that my buchu oil contained sulfur so I hurried up to “Doc” Smith’s house and told him. He was equally excited and said he wasn’t aware of the presence of sulfur in any plants of this family, Rutaceae. Moreover, the oil contained considerable amounts of sulfur which was later shown to vary according to the time of year the plant was collected and distilled, 8.5% in August and 11% in March. … By the end of the year I had prepared a draft of my thesis which I sent to “Doc”. He scrutinised it, made numerous alterations and told me to start again. In my writing he taught me a great deal about organizing one’s material and being punctilious in what you say. Anyway, my thesis was received in time for the next April graduation and I got my degree with distinction. When our paper was latter published in the S.A. Royal Society Proceedings it received the Marloth Medal.’
