Amos B. Smith, III (born August 26, 1944) was awarded Bucknell University's first combined four-year BS-MS degree in Chemistry in 1966. After a year in medical school (University of Pennsylvania), he earned his PhD degree (1972) and completed a year as a Research Associate at Rockefeller University. In 1973, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania; currently, he is the Rhodes-Thompson Professor of Chemistry and Member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center.
Smith's research interests encompass three diverse areas: natural product synthesis, bioorganic chemistry and materials science. To date, more than 75 complex natural products have been prepared in his Laboratory. In collaboration with Ralph Hirschmann, Smith has designed and synthesized non-peptide peptidomimetics of neuropeptide hormone/transmitters and protease enzyme inihibitors and, together with Stephen Benkovic (Penn State), he has prepared haptens for the production of catalytic antibodies capable of peptide bond formation. At Monell, in collaboration with Peter Jurs (Penn State), he pioneered the use of computerized pattern recognition techniques for the analysis of primate chemical communication.
Smith has been a Visiting Professor at Columbia, Cambridge (UK) and Auckland (NZ) Universities. He is the first Editor-in-Chief of the new American Chemical Society journal, Organic Letters. Editorial Board memberships include, among others, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Accounts of Chemical Research, Organic Reactions, Organic Synthesis, Synlett, and Tetrahedron Publications. He has also chaired the NIH Medicinal Chemistry A Study Section and the Executive Committee of the Organic Division of the ACS.
He is co-author of over 425 publications and has delivered over 600 invited lectures, including many plenary and named lectures. His honors and awards include, among many others, The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship, the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, Ernest Guenther Award, and Award for Creativity in Organic Chemistry, the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award, and the RSC Centenary Medal.