Smith was born in Blackpool, England, on April 26, 1932. Smith was admitted to Arnold School, the local private secondary school, with a scholarship. Without this scholarship, Smith would have had little opportunity for advanced education, as his parents did not have the money to pay for it.

After graduating from Arnold School in 1950, Smith enrolled at the University of Manchester in order to study chemistry, realizing a natural inclination toward the "hard" sciences. He moved rapidly through school, receiving a B.Sc. in 1953, and a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1956, both sponsored by scholarship. Smith's desire following completion of his Ph.D. was to earn a fellowship on the West Coast of the United States. This did not work out, but he was accepted into biochemist Har Gobind Khorana's laboratory in Vancouver, Canada. Smith's original plan in migrating to Canada was to work for a year, then return to...