 | Dr. Smith with medical students during his tenure at Northwestern |
Mrs. David W.E. Smith has generously expressed a bequest intention to the David W.E. Smith, MD, Endowed Fund for Gerontology Research, established in honor of her late husband. Dr. Smith was a professor at Indiana University and Northwestern University. He was a 1956 graduate of Swarthmore College and a 1960 graduate of Yale University Medical School, where he was trained in pathology and began his research in microbiology thanks to an NIH fellowship. From 1962-1964, he carried out extensive research in molecular biology at the National Institutes of Health as a research associate working with Dr. Bruce N. Ames in the NIH Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He joined Northwestern in 1969. Based on his research at the above institutions he published numerous peer-reviewed articles in biochemistry and molecular biology journals, making enormous contributions to the transfer RNA (tRNA) field. Transfer RNAs are small RNA molecules that decode genetic messages from the hereditary material, DNA, into protein. Dr. Smith developed many of the early concepts on the adaptation of tRNA for protein synthesis. He demonstrated how the amounts of individual species of tRNA are specialized for protein synthesis and that only one of about 65 such species in cells can regulate the overall expression of different proteins. He developed the idea that the abundance of individual tRNA species had to be consonant with the proteins being synthesized. Many of his accomplishments and discoveries in the tRNA field were achieved using immature red blood cells, which synthesize a single protein, hemoglobin. These results were the basis for many current studies involving the control of protein synthesis in various disease states. Dr. Smith’s interest in biology provided insights to studies of the aging process. In 1987, on sabbatical from Northwestern, he organized a conference at the National Institute on Aging about why women live longer than men, and his principle interest since that time became human longevity. As Associate Director in Gerontology of the Buehler Center on Aging, beginning in 1988, he made important contributions to the understanding of the population and demographic changes that have transformed the health care system from an acute-care system to a chronic-care system, as well as the policy implications of increased longevity. While working extensively with medical students, he led studies on housing needs and preferences among the elderly and pet ownership among the elderly. His 1993 magnum opus, Human Longevity, was published by Oxford University Press. He also published widely on the topics of his avocational interests, including music, travel and coping with disability. The David W.E. Smith, MD, Endowed Fund will support translational research in gerontology; it is designed to benefit both basic science research in gerontology within the Feinberg School of Medicine Department of Medicine and applied researchers at the Buehler Center. It is Mrs. Smith’s desire that the fund support increase links between the two types of research, guided by Dr. Smith’s innovative insights into their integral relationship. Dr. and Mrs. Smith shared a 45-year marriage and, like many spouses, Mrs. Smith was her husband’s partner throughout a 40-year chronic illness. The experience stimulated her interest in palliative and end-of-life care, particularly in its lack of coordination between hospital care, emergency-room care, nursing-home care and the home. Mrs. Smith looks forward to the continued growth of the Smith Fund. “David’s absolute love was teaching. He was dedicated to the medical students he mentored, and they were devoted to him. I feel that we continue his work—our work—through the Smith Fund,” she says. |
