Australian botanist. Lindsay Smith was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, where he attended school. He moved to Brisbane in 1933 to take up a position as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture and Stock. Two years later he joined the Botany Section, where he remained for the rest of his career, minus a period of service in World War Two. Before this, he earned his BSc at the University of Queensland (1940) and was married to fellow herbarium worker Doris Goy.
Smith entered into service with the Australian forces in 1942 and within two years was sent to Sogeri, North East New Guinea, where he was attached to a mobile chemical warfare laboratory. Among his tasks was investigating substitutes for the Australian turpentine pine. Later in 1944 he was transferred, as a botanist, to the Corps of the Royal Engineers New Guinea Forests department, based at Lae.
Alongside fellow Queensland botanists C.T. White and W.W. Jacobs, Smith was one of the principal instructors at a Forestry Botany School conducted at Yalu in July 1944, attended by about 30 American and Australian foresters. As he was classified as a botanist, Smith was free to travel extensively in the country and made many collections in the north-east New Guinea-mandated territories. These specimens formed the nucleus of the Forestry Service herbarium at Lae.
After returning to Brisbane in May 1945 Smith concentrated on the flora of Queensland, completing a number of papers on the state's native vegetation and a few on plants found in New Guinea. He held the rank of Senior Botanist at the time of his death in 1970 at Mt. Barney near Brisbane. Smith had been an active member of the Queensland Naturalists' Club, in which he served as honorary treasurer for many years and as president in 1955. As well as his work dealing with New Guinea botany he was known for his research on rainforest trees with C.T. White and W.D. Francis.
Sources:
S.L. Everist, 1971, The Queensland Naturalist, 20(1-3): 62-63
R.A. Howard, 1994, "The Role of Botanists during World War II in the Pacific Theatre", Botanical Review, 60(2): 231.
