Walter Campbell Smith CBE MC TD (30 November 1887 – 6 December 1988) was a British mineralogist and petrologist.
[5] In the competition for the post, Campbell Smith was placed above geologist Arthur Holmes, who later pioneered radiometric dating, on the basis of his better performance in Latin.
[6] Campbell Smith worked at the British Museum for the rest of his career, with the exception of two periods of military service.
[7] When he was appointed deputy chief scientific officer for the museum in 1948, he featured in the Illustrated London News as one of the personalities of the week.
[10] Other topics he worked on included stone hand axes, meteorites, and the geology of rocks collected from the sea floor.
[7] The special brigade recruited volunteers with a background in chemistry, and were responsible for the British chemical warfare projects during the First World War.
[7] During the Second World War, Campbell Smith volunteered once again for service, and from 1939 to 1941 he was second-in-command of 163 OCTU, an Officer Cadet training unit formed from the Artists' Rifles.
Finnegan was head of the arachnids section at the museum at the time, and worked on mites and ticks but had to resign her post in order to marry.