Descendant of a pioneer Oklahoma family, Sam Corry Smith was born in Oklahoma in 1922. He studied chemistry at University of Oklahoma and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of Wisconsin.
From 1951 to 1955 Dr. Smith was assistant and associate professor of biochemistry at University of Oklahoma School of Medicine.
Smith joined Research Corporation in 1955 as Secretary of the Williams-Waterman Fund for the Combat of Dietary Diseases. He became Director of Grants Programs in 1965 and Vice President of Grants in 1967. Smith was a hands-on kind of person who worked in the field during RC’s nutrition surveys in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and helped organize the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute and the Latin American Nutrition Society.
In 1975, the newly formed M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust of Vancouver, Washington, chose Dr. Smith as its first executive director, a position he held until his retirement in 1988. Sam Smith died in 2004.