Annette J. Smith, professor emerita of literature at the California Institute of Technology, passed away on October 18. She was 100 years old.
Born in 1924 in Algeria, Dr. Smith was educated in the French school system, where she studied Latin and Greek before graduating from high school. During World War II, her family took refuge in Morocco. After the war, Dr. Smith moved to Paris, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in classics with certificates in French, Latin, Greek, and philology. She soon took a position teaching French at the University of Wales for two years, where she learned to speak English. Next, she returned to France to earn her master’s degree in English literature from the Sorbonne.
In 1953, Dr. Smith moved to California with her husband David, an American she met in France following his service in World War II. While David taught English at Fullerton Junior College, Dr. Smith taught French at Scripps College and what is now Claremont McKenna College. In 1964, Dr. Smith returned to France for her doctoral studies.
After completing her Ph.D. in 1970, Dr. Smith was hired as a lecturer in French at Caltech, where David served as a professor and master of student houses. During the early 1970s, she advocated for better salaries and benefits for women staff members and helped to mentor the institution’s first women undergraduates. In 1982, Dr. Smith was promoted to associate professor with tenure. Over the next decade, she studied the works of French poets Arthur de Gobineau and Aimé Césaire, ultimately translating nearly the entirety of Césaire’s body of work into English. In 1990, Dr. Smith spent two years teaching French at the University of the Pacific in Tahiti before retiring from Caltech in 1993.