He returned to the Royal College of Science, where he did research with Herbert Greenway Newth on the development of collar cavities in lancelets (also known as amphioxi).
[1][3] At the Royal College of Science, Smith also did research on the antennal sense organs of Diptera and how feeding by capsid bugs damages plant tissues.
The University of Manchester assigned Kenneth M. Smith as entomologist and E. Smith-Holmes as mycologist to investigate potato leaf curl disease.
Smith's initial role at the research station was to investigate insect transmission of potato viruses.
From 1959 to 1962, Smith stayed on, working full time with his salary paid by a special funding arrangement.
[4] His collaborators include Roy Markham, Ralph Wyckoff,[5] N. Xeros,[6][7][8] Claude F. Rivers,[9] and Robley C.
[12] In 1952 Kurt Jacoby of the Academic Press selected Kenneth M. Smith and Max A. Lauffer (1914–2012) as editors-in-chief of the book series "Advances in Virology".
[1] For two years from 1962 to 1964 Smith worked as a visiting professor in the University of Pittsburgh's biophysics department with Max A. Lauffer.
For four and a half years from 1964 to 1969 Smith worked as a visiting professor at the Cell Research Institute at the University of Texas, Austin.
At age 77, Smith returned to Cambridge, where he completed the 3rd edition of A Textbook of Plant Virus Diseases (published in 1972) and two other books.
[12] In 1923 Smith married Germaine Maria Noël, a French citizen whose father was a lace manufacturer.