John Derek Smith FRS (1924–2003) was a British Molecular Biologist who participated in many of the major discoveries at the LMB

Laboratory of Molecular Biology

The Laboratory of Molecular Biology is a research institute in Cambridge, England, which was at the forefront of the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s, since then it remains a major medical research laboratory with a much broader focus.-Early beginnings: 1947-61:Max...

• Born Southampton, England 8 December 1924
• Scientific staff, Agricultural Research Council Virus Research Unit, Cambridge 1945-59;
• Research Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge
  Clare College, Cambridge
  Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1326, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. Clare is famous for its chapel choir and for its gardens on "the Backs"...
  
   1949-52;
• Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, University of California, Berkeley 1955-57;
• Senior Research Fellow, California Institute of Technology
  California Institute of Technology
  The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
  
   1959-62,
• Member of Scientific Staff, LMB
  Laboratory of Molecular Biology
  The Laboratory of Molecular Biology is a research institute in Cambridge, England, which was at the forefront of the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s, since then it remains a major medical research laboratory with a much broader focus.-Early beginnings: 1947-61:Max...
  
  , Cambridge 1962-88
• Sherman Fairchild Scholar 1974-75;
• Head, Subdivision of Biochemistry, Cell Biology Division 1976-88
• FRS 1976;

In 1955 he married Ruth Aney (marriage dissolved 1968); died Cambridge 22 November 2003.

He was one the very few scientists who understood the importance of nucleic acids before 1953. According to Nobel Laureate Sidney Altman

Sidney Altman

Sidney Altman is a Canadian American molecular biologist, who is currently the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University. In 1989 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas R...

"John Smith was a venerable nucleic acids biochemist. He had worked on the nucleic acids of viruses long before coming to the MRC-LMB and was an expert on identification and characterization of nucleotides, much of it done on unlabeled material, detected by observing chromatographs under UV light. He was a quiet person but very lively in conversations about science."