File C3 - Letters from Smithies to his mother, father, and sister Violet

Having studied at Edinburgh University, Smithies came to St John's College, Cambridge in 1931. He took his BA in 1933 and was awarded a PhD in 1937. After a period of study at Princeton, Smithies was elected to a Reserch Fellowship at St John's. During the Second World War he worked in the Ministry of Supply. He returned to Cambridge in 1945 to become a teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Mathematics. From 1962 until his retirement in 1979, he was Reader in Functional Analysis. In his retirement Smithies pursued his interest in the history of mathematics, in particular the work of Augustin Cauchy.