Archibald Smith
FRS FRSE (10 August 1813,
Greenhead,
Glasgow – 26 December 1872,
London) was a
Scottish mathematician and
lawyer.
He was the only son of James Smith FRS (1782-1867), a wealthy merchant and antiquary of
Jordanhill, Glasgow,[1] and his wife Mary, daughter of
Alexander Wilson, professor of astronomy in
Glasgow University. Archibald studied at Glasgow University in 1828, and then at
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was
Senior Wrangler, said to be the first Scot to achieve this position,[1] and first
Smith's prizeman in 1836, elected a fellow of Trinity College.[2] He was one of the founders of the
Cambridge Mathematical Journal. He entered
Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1841, practising as an equity draughtsman and property lawyer.
His scientific work was mainly in the field of applications of
magnetism and the
Earth's magnetic field. He obtained practical formulae for the correction of magnetic compass observations made on board ship, which General Sir
Edward Sabine published in the
Transactions of the Royal Society: Smith later made convenient tables. In 1859 he edited
William Scoresby's Journal of a Voyage to Australia for Magnetical Research and gave an exact formula for the effect of the iron of a ship on the compass. In 1862, in conjunction with the hydrographer
Sir Frederick John Owen Evans FRS (1815-1885), then superintendent of the compass department of the navy, he published an Admiralty Manual for ascertaining and applying the Deviations of the Compass caused by the Iron in a Ship.
He was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1837.[4] Elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1856, he was awarded its
Royal Medal in 1865 "for his papers in the Philosophical Transactions and elsewhere, on the magnetism of ships".[5] In 1866 Emperor
Alexander II of Russia presented him with a gold compass, set in diamonds, and emblazoned with the Imperial Arms.
In 1853 he married Susan Emma, daughter of Sir James Parker of
Rothley Temple,
Leicestershire. They had six sons and two daughters, the eldest
James Parker Smith, becoming M.P. for
Partick,
Lanarkshire.