Dr. Robert Karl Smither
By
Laura Jeffers
Posted: 2025-04-29T02:46:05Z
Dr. Robert Karl Smither, a long-time Lightning class competitor and supporter died peacefully at home in February, 2025.
Growing up in Buffalo, Bob started sailing Lightnings early on Abino Bay with his father Karl Smither. After sailing in the class for many years he became involved in the class organization. Bob was instrumental in several early changes to the Lightning and the specifications. This included calculating where to put extra lead in boats in such a way that the boats handled the same with or without extra lead weight. The largest change Bob over saw was the transition from the wood mast and the early aluminum rectangular mast to the oval section we use today. This change helped the class flourish and grow by having a robust safe mast. Before that change the wood masts broke fairly often. Bob went on to serve the class as Chief Measurer for three year and then as Lightning Class President in 1988. He also became an International Measurer and worked on many big events including a number of Pan Am Games and two Olympics.
Born on July 18, 1929 in Buffalo, NY, he studied physics at the university of Buffalo. Then he moved on to Yale. After completing his doctorate in physics there in 1956, he accepted a post at Argonne Laboratories. That turned into a 50 year career! Initially in the Physics Division, he also worked in the Materials Science Division, the Advanced Photon Source, the fusion program, and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Bob even joined the hunt for the reported Leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari painting in Florence. As a physicist, he was an experimentalist, which meant he was hands on and constantly tinkering with equipment to make experiments work. He invented an assortment of devices for which he obtained patents. These had potential uses ranging from medical imaging to astronomy, which led him to collaboration with the European space program.
Aside from sailing his hobby was archeoastronomy, which took him on trips to Mexico, Central America and the Middle East, and he also became an eclipse chaser and traveled as far afield as Chile and China to see them.
Bob was predeceased by his first wife, Louise Cleaver, and is survived by, his wife of 25 years, Carol Meyer, his three children, John, Jim, and Cathy, six grandchildren, and one great grandson. Bob is also survived by his sister Anne Smither Allen.