Richard Harbert Smith (15 January 1894, Dillsboro, Indiana – 6 July 1957, Alexandria, Virginia) was a professor and researcher of aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), from 1929 to 1945.

[3] His academic education was developed at the Moores Hill College (BS, 1915), Indiana (today, University of Evansville);[4] the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SB, 1918), Cambridge (Greater Boston), Massachusetts; and the Johns Hopkins University (MA,[5] 1928; PhD,[1] 1929), Baltimore, Maryland.

After World War I, Prof. Smith worked as an assistant at the United States Naval Research Laboratory.

[7] During the World War II period, Prof. Smith coordinated the MIT Civilian Pilot Training Program[8][9] and was also instructor for several classes of female engineering trainees for the Curtiss company.

In 1945, he left MIT to go to Brazil, hired by the Brazilian government, in a venture led by Casimiro Montenegro Filho, then lieutenant-colonel of the Brazilian Air Force, to establish an institute of aeronautics,[10] the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (Aeronautical Technology Institute), of which he became the first rector.