Wilson Smith (1897-1965)

Wilson Smith was born in Great Harwood on June 21 st , 1897. He worked for a year as a pupil-teacher at Great Harwood Elementary School. He joined the RAMC in 1915 and served in France and Belgium until 1919 and was at Passchendaele. He later described the war years as a “shattering and unhappy experience.”

Smith was one of the discoverers of the human influenza virus in 1933. The virus he isolated is known as WSN/33. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1949 (his proposer was Alexander Fleming).

A friend wrote: “I admired most his modesty, his kindness and his simplicity. Whatever others may have thought of his numerous scientific and administrative achievements, he himself took a very humble and modest view of them.”