David Weyhe Smith (September 24, 1926 – January 23, 1981) was an American pediatrician and dysmorphologist, best known for his pioneering book Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation and for describing fetal alcohol syndrome.
He gained his medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and undertook postdoctoral studies during 1950-51 and 1953-56 in the Department of Pediatrics.
[1] In 1958, he began working at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and became a professor of pediatrics there.
In 1973, Smith and Kenneth Lyons Jones identified a pattern of "craniofacial, limb, and cardiovascular defects associated with prenatal onset growth deficiency and developmental delay" in eight unrelated children of three ethnic groups, all born to mothers who were alcoholics.
His book Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation is considered a key work in the field.