Gertrude Smith was born in Peoria, Illinois and first studied at Bradley University before obtaining her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Chicago. Smith's doctoral dissertation focused on Greek law, a subject she continued to work on during her time on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Smith became the Edwin Olson Professor of Greek in 1933 and from 1934-61 she was the Chair of the Department of Classics. Smith's work focused on Greek law, on which she published extensively. In collaboration with Robert Bonner, Smith wrote the two volume work The Administration of Justice from Homer to Aristotle, a work which remains the key reference for work on Greek law. Smith also published a series of articles on the administration of justice in ancient Greece with Bonner in the 1940s. Smith was President of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in 1933-34 and 1940-41 and President of the American Philological Association in 1958. Smith served on the editorial board of the journal Classical Philology from 1925-1965. Smith was a founding member of the national Classics honor societyEta Sigma Phi and was instrumental in making it a national society. Smith's association with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens began in the 1940s. In 1948 Smith was a participant in the Summer Session and spent six weeks travelling around Greece. She returned in 1949 as the Annual Professor of Greek Literature. Smith led three Summer Sessions in 1958, 1960, and 1961. Smith was the Chairman of the Committee on Admissions and Fellowships of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 1945-1963. Smith was, in particular, highly influential in the organisation of the Summer Session from the 1950s onwards and noted that the School's function was “to afford the opportunity to the uninitiated to get some acquaintance with Greece and really to learn something of its history, art, literature, and monuments”. Smith was also part of the move to offer Byzantine Studies at ASCSA, with the Gennadeion Fellowship in Post-Classical Greece first awarded in 1963. Smith was an advocate for wide student access to the Summer Session and was a founder of the Ben Hodge Hill Scholarship for students. Towards the end of Smith's involvement in the ASCSA, she worked to widen access to membership of the School to non-American and Canadian students. After Smith's retirement from the University of Chicago in 1961, she was visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, and Vanderbilt University.
Gertrude Smith Professorship at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Smith bequeathed $100,000 to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens on her death in 1985 for student scholarships for the Summer Session. The following year, the directorship of the Summer Session was named the Gertrude Smith Professorship and is held by a visiting academic to direct the Summer Session of the School. Previous holders include:
