Sir David Cecil Smith FRS FRSE FLS (born 21 May 1930 Port Talbot, South Wales – 29 June 2018[2]) was a British botanist.

[4] Smith discovered that lichens and Radiata (coelenterates) shared a similar biological mechanism in carbohydrate metabolism.

[4][6] The family remained in the Sinai desert until the end of World War II, except for occasional periods of leave.

However, he discovered that he could have financial support from a Browne scholarship to study botany at The Queen's College, Oxford, so he changed programme.

Smith was then appointed as a Royal Society Senior research fellow at Wadham College, Oxford, from 1964 to 1971.

[9] Smith returned to a position at Oxford in 1980 as the Sibthorpian Professor of Rural Economy,[8] named in honour of John Sibthorp.

[13] Smith also received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1993[14] He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1975 and was biological secretary from 1983 to 1987.

In 1965, he married Lesley Mutch, a Scottish doctor and epidemiologist and they had three children together, called Bryony, Adam and Cameron.