Christianna Smith, a zoologist and Mount Holyoke College graduate and faculty member, was born on March 27, 1893 in Newark, New Jersey. Her father was William Smith, a teacher. After graduating from high school in New Bedford, Massachusetts she attended Mount Holyoke College from 1911-1915, where she majored in mathematics and zoology and received a B.A. degree. She subsequently received a M.A. (1920) and Ph.D. (1923) in zoology from Cornell University. Smith taught zoology at Mount Holyoke College from 1915 until her retirement in 1958, except for the years when she taught at Cornell University (1918-1919) and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (1920, 1922, 1924). She received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Mount Holyoke in 1975. She died at ninety on August 16, 1983 in Northampton, Massachusetts.
From the guide to the Smith Papers MS 0739., 1903-1984, 1920-1984, (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)
