Fellow Monellian, Amos B. Smith III, PhD, 80, passed away in early February 2025. He was a full Member at Monell and Professor Emeritus and the Rhodes-Thompson Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.
After receiving his PhD from The Rockefeller University in 1972, Dr. Smith started his joint appointments with Monell and Penn’s Department of Chemistry in 1973. He was a Member of the Monell faculty ever since. At Monell, he worked with Monell Member Gisela Epple, PhD, on the chemistry of marmoset social odors; and with Monell Distinguished Member and Emeritus Director and President Gary Beauchamp, PhD, on similar topics with rodents. In this work, Dr. Smith pioneered the use of computerized pattern recognition techniques for the analysis of animal chemical communication.
More recently, Smith along with Beauchamp, Monell Member Paul Breslin, PhD, and colleagues at Monell and elsewhere, identified and chemically synthesized a compound prominently found in high-end extra virgin olive oils. This compound, first fully described in a 2005 study published in the journal Nature, is a natural anti-inflammatory, which they named oleocanthal. It appears to account for many of the health-related benefits of olive oil consumption.
Dr. Smith was a much-decorated scientist and academician responsible for hundreds of scientific publications on the synthesis of pharmacologically significant compounds. Monell forever remembers him as a friend, supporter, collaborator and mentor.
