Henry John Stephen Smith

Professor Henry John Stephen Smith FRS FRSE FRAS LLD was an Irish mathematician and amateur astronomer remembered for his work in elementary divisors, quadratic forms, and the Smith-Minkowski-Siegel mass formula in number theory. In matrix theory he is visible today in having his name on the Smith normal form of a matrix, and he was first to discover the Cantor set. Smith was born in Dublin, Ireland, the fourth child of John Smith (1792–1828), a barrister, who died when Henry …