Michael Bryant Smith Author of Evaluating Organization Development
FEATURED AUTHOR

Michael Bryant Smith

Professor Emeritus of Chemistry
University of Connecticut

I am Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Connecticut. I retired after 38.5 years experience as a research director and teacher in the area of organic synthesis. I am the author of 29 books ranging from research monographs and graduate level textbooks in organic chemistry, to textbooks for undergraduates taking organic chemistry.

Subjects: Chemistry

Biography

Professor Michael B. Smith was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1946 and moved to Madison Heights, Virginia in 1957, where he attended Amherst County High School.  He received an A.A. from Ferrum College in 1967 and a B.S. in chemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1969.  After working for three years at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. in Newport News VA as an analytical chemist, he entered graduate school at Purdue University.  He received a Ph.D. in Organic chemistry in 1977, under the auspices of Professor Joe Wolinsky.  Professor Smith spent one year as a faculty research associate at the Arizona State University with Professor G. Robert Pettit, working on the isolation of cytotoxic principles from plants and sponges.  He spent a second year of postdoctoral work with Professor Sidney M. Hecht at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working on the synthesis of bleomycin A2.  Professor Smith began his academic career at the University of Connecticut in 1979, and retired in 2017 as professor of chemistry.  He is currently Professor Emeritus.   In 1986 he spent a sabbatical leave in the laboratories of Professor Leon Ghosez, at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, as a visiting professor.  He is the author of 97 peer-reviewed research articles and 29 books.

In addition to this research, Professor Smith is the author of the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th editions of March's Advanced Organic Chemistry. He is also the author of an undergraduate textbook in organic chemistry entitled Organic Chemistry. An Acid-Base Approach, now in its 3rd edition.  He is the editor of the Compendium of Organic Synthetic Methods, Volumes 6-13.  He is the author of Biochemistry: An Organic Chemistry Approach,  He is the author of Organic Chemistry: Two Semesters, in it’s 2nd edition, which is an outline of undergraduate organic chemistry to be used as a study guide for the first organic course.  He has authored a research monograph entitled Synthesis of Non-alpha Amino Acids, in its 2nd edition.  

Education

    Ph.D., Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 1977
    B.S. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 1969
    A.A. Ferrum College, Ferrum, VA, 1967

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

    Before retirement, Professor Smith's research interests focus on (1) the synthesis and structure-proof of bioactive lipids obtained from the human dental pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis.  (2) The development of indocyanine-imidazole dye conjugates that show an affinity for cancerous hypoxic tumors, allowing imaging of the tumors using near-infrared fluorescence spectroscopy.

Personal Interests

    Travel, photography

Books

Featured Title
 Featured Title - Organic Chemistry: An Acid-Base Approach, 3e - 3rd Edition book cover

News

New organic chemistry textbook

By: Michael Bryant Smith
Subjects: Chemistry

My 29th book has just been published – a textbook for undergraduate organic chemistry. In this edition I was fortunate to have many current scientists willing to share their work for the book. I also added the work of chemists from the 19th and 20th centuries whose work has not appeared in previous textbooks. My goal is to expand and showcase the diversity that makes our science vibrant and special. It also allowed me to add many of the modern reactions that we all use in our research. Those reactions have not appeared in previous textbooks. My thanks to the participating scientists and to my editors and publisher at Taylor and Francis who made this possible.