Alfred Smee

Alfred Smee FRS, FRCS (18 June 1818, Camberwell – 11 January 1877, Finsbury Circus) was an English surgeon, chemist, metallurgist, electrical researcher and inventor.

During most of his student life, he lived at his father's official residence within the Bank of England and there did research on chemistry and electro-metallurgy which made him famous a few years later.

During this time as a consulting surgeon he also continued his chemical and electro-metallurgical research and developed the Smee's battery (zinc plate and silver plate, coated with platinum black, in sulphuric acid),[2] for which he was awarded the gold Isis medal from the Society of Arts.

[1]His 1849 treatise Elements of Electro-Biology was a pioneering effort in electrical physiology and in 1850 a popular version was published with the title Instinct and Reason.

Elizabeth Mary Smee (1843-1919) married William Odling[1] and published a memoir of her father in 1878.