Waldo E. Smith was born on August 20, 1900, in
New Hampton, Iowa. He attended the University of Iowa, graduating with
Bachelor’s (1923) and Master’s (1924) degrees in engineering. Hydrology and
civil engineering were his specialties. In the 1920s and 1930s, Smith worked as
a professional engineer on hydraulic projects throughout the Midwest and taught
on the faculties of the University of Illinois, North Dakota State College, and
Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey. He joined the American Geophysical Union in
1936, affiliating with the Hydrology Section. A position with the U.S. Soil Conservation
Service brought Smith to Washington, D.C., in 1940. In the early 1940s the
administrative duties of running AGU were still handled largely through
volunteer labor. John A. Fleming, director of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, had served as General
Secretary since 1925 and had contributed long hours in correspondence, editing,
and organizing meetings, with only a clerical assistant or two. With 2200
members by its 25th anniversary in 1944, however, the organization had grown
too large to continue to manage without a full-time professional staff. In
September of that year, Smith accepted an offer from Fleming to become the
first Executive Secretary (and later, Executive Director) of the Union. For the
next 26 years, he was omnipresent in AGU’s activities. Smith’s business acumen,
energy, and organizational skills well suited him for his executive
responsibilities. He excelled as a consensus builder. Under his stewardship,
AGU launched new scientific journals and monograph series and initiated its
foreign translation program. Smith personally edited the Transactions for many
years. He strove to advance the stature of the Union at home and abroad and
served as Secretary of the U.S. National Committee for the International Union
of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). Contemporaries of Smith recall his phenomenal
memory, especially his ability to recognize nearly all AGU members by name and
face. He was genuinely interested in people and, through lectures at colleges
and universities across the United States, helped guide the careers of many
young geophysicists. By the time he retired in 1970, Smith directed a staff of
40 people, serving a growing organization of more than 10,000 members. In 1982,
recognizing that “there is more to doing science than doing science,” the AGU
council created an international award in Smith’s name. Appropriately, the
Waldo E. Smith Award is given for dedicated and extraordinary service to
geophysics. The following year, the Executive Director Emeritus became the
first recipient of his namesake medal. Smith’s professional legacy was summed
up in his citation: “for over a quarter of a century AGU, American geophysics,
and Waldo E. Smith were synonymous.” Waldo Smith died at his residence in
Washington on August 12, 1994.