Robert Mumford Smock (October 21, 1908 – April 22, 1986) was an American scientist and a professor at Cornell University.

[2] Professor Smock had a huge influence on the growing, storage and consumption of apples throughout the United States and the entire world.

Smock's laboratory was located in the wet basement of an old barn near the university where he conducted experiments in which he placed different types of apples in rooms with different temperatures and different combinations of oxygen and carbon dioxide in order to test their effect on the fruits.

This led to the need to preserve the fruits and then large storage rooms with controlled atmosphere began to be used throughout the United States.

His former graduate students, notably Archie Van Doren in Washington State, George Mattus in Virginia, F.W.

This caused losses of millions of dollars every year to the apple growers of the world until Smock discovered that Diphenylamine and Ethoxyquin used immediately after picking prevented the problem.

In addition, he worked on the development of equipment used by farmers in order to put these materials in the most appropriate way on the apples immediately after picking.