George David William Smith FRS, FIMMM, FInstP, FRSC, CEng (b.

George D. W. Smith studied at Salesian College, Farnborough, he then graduated from Oxford with a metallurgy degree in 1965, and did postgraduate work in the Chemistry Department, where he used the field emission microscope and the field ion microscope to study the epitaxial growth of nickel on tungsten.

Smith returned to the Department of Materials[1] where he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Sir Peter Hirsch to establish a research group for metallurgical field ion microscopy.

He led the Oxford research group where Cerezo, Smith, and Godfrey developed novel atom probe techniques for the direct observation of solid materials in three dimensions on the atomic scale.

He officially retired from his academic post in Oxford in 2010, but continues to be active in research as an Emeritus Professor of Materials, and as an external consultant to an energy company.