Professor George David William Smith FRS (b. 1943, in Aldershot

Aldershot

Aldershot is a town in the English county of Hampshire, located on heathland about southwest of London. The town is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council...

, Hampshire) is a materials scientist

Materials science

Materials science is an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates...

 who, with Alfred Cerezo and Terry Godfrey, invented the Atom-Probe Tomograph

Atom probe

The atom probe is a microscope used in material science that was invented in 1967 by Erwin Wilhelm Müller, J. A. Panitz, and S. Brooks McLane. The atom probe is closely related to the method of Field Ion Microscopy, which is the first microscopic method to achieve atomic resolution, occurring in...

 in 1988. He is currently a Professor and was formerly head of the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford

Trinity College, Oxford

The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of Sir Thomas Pope , or Trinity College for short, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It stands on Broad Street, next door to Balliol College and Blackwells bookshop,...

. He is currently associated with Wolfson College, Oxford.

Professor Smith graduated from Oxford with a Metallurgy

Metallurgy

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...

 degree in 1965, and did postgraduate work in the Chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

 Department, where he used the field emission microscope and the field ion microscope

Field ion microscope

Field ion microscopy is an analytical technique used in materials science. The field ion microscope is a type of microscope that can be used to image the arrangement of atoms at the surface of a sharp metal tip....

 to study the epitaxial growth of nickel on tungsten.

Professor Smith returned to the Department of Material where, under Sir Peter Hirsch

Peter Hirsch

Sir Peter Bernhard Hirsch FRS is a leading figure in British materials science who has made fundamental contributions to the application of transmission electron microscopy to metals....

, he helped establish a research group for field ion microscopy. It was under this group that Cerezo, Smith, and Godfrey developed the Atom-Probe Tomograph. They started the company Kindbrisk, which was renamed to Oxford nanoScience and is part of Polaron to sell their tomographs. Smith now serves as the non-executive chairman of Polaron.

Selected honours

• Acta Materialia Gold Medal (2005)
• Sir George Beilby Medal and Prize, Royal Society of Chemistry
  Royal Society of Chemistry
  The Royal Society of Chemistry is a learned society in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemical sciences." It was formed in 1980 from the merger of the Chemical Society, the Royal Institute of Chemistry, the Faraday Society and the Society for Analytical Chemistry with a new...
  
  (1985)
• Rosenhain Medal and Prize 1991