Paul Althaus Smith

He also worked with George David Birkhoff, with whom he wrote a 1928 paper in ergodic theory, entitled Structure analysis of surface transformations, which appeared in the Journal des Mathématiques.

He subsequently became a professor at Columbia University and at Barnard College.

His students at Columbia included Sherman K. Stein and Moses Richardson.

He has many academic descendants through Richardson and his student Louis Billera.

Smith was married to a Swiss–American early music pioneer, Suzanne Bloch.