He graduated from Cranbrook Schools, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1964, where his parents had sent him for his senior year to strengthen his study habits.

[1] During the 1968–1969 school year, Smith taught 7th grade math in Inkster, Michigan instead of serving in the Vietnam War.

[4][5] This work began in the early 1980s with a cigar box full of seeds that had been stored in the attic of the Smithsonian.

Using genetic analysis, Smith and others showed that Cucurbita pepo had been independently domesticated twice, once in Mexico and once in eastern North America.

[1] Smith married Melinda Zeder, who is an archaeobiologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.