Erwin Frink Smith (January 21, 1854 – April 6, 1927) was an American plant pathologist with the United States Department of Agriculture.

[3][6] On September 20, 1886, Smith took a position in the Mycological Section of the Division of Botany of the US Department of Agriculture, assisting Frank Lamson-Scribner.

Resistance to the idea of a bacterial basis, which Smith debated with German scientist Alfred Fischer in the 1890s, eventually gave way.

[10] Dutch American botanical explorer Frank Nicholas Meyer worked for Smith in 1901, upon his arrival in the United States.

Brown, Mary K. Bryan, Florence Hedges, Lucia McCulloch, Agnes J. Quirk, Angie Beckwith, and Charlotte Elliott.

[14] Many of Smith's assistants praised him for giving them research projects suited to their skills rather than confining them to the more limited tasks presumed by their job classifications.