Cyril Stanley Smith; Metallurgist for Manhattan Project

Cyril Stanley Smith, 88, internationally recognized metallurgist who directed the preparation of fissionable metal for the atomic bomb. Born in Birmingham, England, he studied at the University of Birmingham and then emigrated to the United States to earn his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1927 until 1942, Smith was research metallurgist at the American Brass Co., receiving about 20 patents. After brief service with the War Metallurgy Committee in Washington, he joined the Manhattan Project working on the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M. After World War II, Smith founded and directed the Institute for the Study of Metals at the University of Chicago. He received the Presidential Medal for Merit in 1946 for his work on the atomic bomb, and was named by President Harry S. Truman as one of nine original advisers to the Atomic Energy Commission. He ended his career teaching metallurgy at MIT from 1961 until his retirement in 1969. On Tuesday in Cambridge, Mass., of cancer.