He was born in the (now former) town of
Washington, Alabama, in 1841, the son of Samuel Parrish Smith and his wife Adelaide Julia Allen. After an education in
Prattville and a three-year stint at
Central High School in
Philadelphia, Eugene matriculated to the
University of Alabama as a junior in 1860, where he graduated with an A.B. in 1862. With the
American Civil War underway, Eugene enlisted as a private with the
33rd Regiment Alabama Infantry of the
Confederate States Army, and was elected to the rank of 2nd lieutenant by the men. In December 1862, Eugene was appointed Instructor of Military Tactics at the University of Alabama by
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate states. He remained in that post for the remainder of the war. In 1865 he entered graduate school at the
University of Berlin, followed by further studies at the
University of Göttingen, and finally spent two years at the
University of Heidelberg, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1868. Returning to the United States, Dr. Smith joined the
University of Mississippi faculty as an instructor of chemistry. In addition to his teaching duties, he served as assistant state geologist for
Mississippi from 1868–1871. In 1871 he was named professor of geology at the rebuilding University of Alabama. On July 10, 1872 he married Jane Henry Meredith Garland; the couple had a son, Merrill Smith. Still on the staff of the University of Alabama, in 1873 Dr. Smith became Alabama state Geologist. He resumed a state geological survey that had been discontinued in 1857 with the death of
Michael Tuomey, reporting on the mineral resources of Alabama. In 1878 he served as honorary commissioner for the state of Alabama to the
Exposition Universelle in
Paris,
France. From 1884–1889 he served as a member of the American committee for the
International Geological Congress. In 1904 he was a sectional vice president for the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was vice president for the
Geological Society of America in 1906 and served as president in 1913. At the age of 86, he died at his home in Tuscaloosa eight days after surgery for a strangulated
hernia. During his career, Dr. Smith had 116 publications in geological and scientific scholarly journals.
Smith Hall on the
University of Alabama campus is named after him; this building is now the Alabama Museum of Natural History. In 1953, he was made a member of the
Alabama Hall of Fame. ==References==