Yorick Smythies (21 February 1917 – 1980) was a student and friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein known for his notes of the philosopher's lectures.

[5][8][9] Smythies began the Moral Sciences Tripos at King's College, Cambridge in 1935, graduating with a First in philosophy in 1939.

[1] And (although Smythies completed his formal studies in 1939) he continued to do so through the academic year of 1939/1940 and took some further notes during a temporary return to Cambridge between late 1940 and early 1941.

[26]Ray Monk's claim[27] (repeated by Peter J. Conradi[14] and Valerie Purton[28]) that Smythies suffered from (paranoid) schizophrenia is disputed by Volker A.

Conradi however identifies a "schizophrenic breakdown" as the cause of Yorick 'hiding behind trees' and "making strange utterances" and mentions time spent by him in a mental hospital.

[14] An explanation is offered by Yorick's first cousin, the neuropsychiatrist J. R. Smythies who, also disputing Monk's claims of schizophrenia, claimed that, prescribed amphetamines for depression, Yorick Smythies became dependent on them and subsequently developed a "wholly iatrogenic" chronic paranoid amphetamine psychosis.

[29] According to Frank Cioffi, Smythies consulted the psychiatrist Maurice O'Connor Drury about his "schizophrenic episodes".

[31][32] Diana was the daughter of the British Intelligence officer Hugh Pollard and had, aged eighteen, accompanied her father in posing as tourists to 'camouflage' the covert flight from England that collected General Franco from his 'semi-banishment' in the Canary Islands and took him to Spanish Morocco in 1936.

[35][36] Peg would survive Yorick and go on to marry another friend and former student of Wittgenstein, the philosopher Rush Rhees.

[37][38] Volker A. Munz, insists (contrary to the claims of Ray Monk[27]) that "there were no tragic circumstances" surrounding Smythies death, reporting: "Having been afflicted with emphisema for about five years and knowing not to live much longer he died in 1980.