A Family Portrait of "U.D."

HELEN E. McALEER

Editor's Note: Professor David Eugene Smith was a beloved
member of the facidty of Teachers College from i^oi until his
retirement in 1^26. As shown in the following article by his niece,
Mrs. Helen Jewett McAleer, he was an ardent and learned collec¬
tor of early works on mathematics, and he spent much of his free
time both at home and abroad in pursuit of this activity, which to
him was far more than a hobby. He was, in fact, one of the first in
America to teach the history of mathematics, and he related his
course directly to his own collection.

In ip^i, five years after his retirement, he presented to Columbia
University his entire library of mathematical works, Orientalia,
medieval and renaissance documents and manuscripts, and letters
and portraits of prominent mathematicians. The collection totaled
some 20,000 pieces. To this he added, in ip^s, his famous trove of
some 2j^ rare astronomical and calculating instruments, ranging
in time and form from an Alexandrian terra cotta zodiacal table
through telescopes, abaci, spheres, tally sticks, and the like, which
he gathered in the various countries he visited.

Finally, upon his death in i<)44, he bequeathed a substantial
fund, the earnings of which have been and continue to be used to
further the developnent of one of the greatest and best-known
collections ever to come to Columbia.

' HEN my uncle David Eugene Smith, after twenty-
five years as Professor of Mathematics at Teachers
College of Columbia University, retired in 1926, his
friend Geoige A. Plimpton had this to say at the dinner in honor
of the occasion: "Piofessoi Smith is now Emeiitus Piofessor at
Columbia Universit\, but I want to assure him, and vou, that he
 

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