C. A. B. Smith (c.1918-2002) holder of the Weldon Chair of Biometry at the Galton Laboratory was a member of the Mathematical Association for over sixty years. Amongst his scientific work, he developed the standard statistical methods now used to map genes onto chromosomes and he wrote a text book Biomathematics. He recently contributed a poem written by the mysterious ‘Blanche Descartes’ to the Gazette and it was published posthumously.