Frank Dodd Smith Jr. ’63

Tony, a lawyer and a brilliant mathematician, died Oct. 11, 2019, at his residence in Cartersville, Ga. 

He attended Cartersville High School, where he was valedictorian and editor of the newspaper. At Princeton he won the Arthur H. Brown prize for mathematics scholarship. After a degree from Emory University School of Law he went into practice in Cartersville, where he supported the Booth Western Art Museum and the Tellus Science Museum. 

A voluminous reader, Tony attained an encyclopedic knowledge of art, science, history, politics, and especially mathematics and high-energy particle physics. For decades he pursued a sideline or avocation as a scholar, summarizing his work in a book, Cl(16) Science, Art, Music, and on his website. As a self-employed person unaffiliated with any research institution, Tony was frustrated in his efforts to have his research enter the mainstream. 

He described how Clifford algebra relates to art (“The Large Glass” by Duchamp), to music (Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge), and to archetypes of  Jung’s Red Book. He once wrote to a friend: “After you read a LOT of things you begin to notice that parts of each thing in the LOT fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.” 

Tony’s survivors include seven cousins.