Oliver R. Smoot

Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr. (born 1940) was Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) from 2001 to 2002 and President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) from 2003 to 2004. He received his Bachelor of Science from MIT and his Juris Doctor (law degree) from Georgetown University.

Biography

Smoot, a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, graduated from MIT with the class of 1962. He is primarily known in Boston, Massachusetts for the smoot marks on the Harvard Bridge, where he was used as a unit of measure for measuring the length of the bridge, as part of a fraternity pledging prank.

Smoot gave a speech to a hearing of the House Science Committee's Subcommittee on Technology on March 20, 2000, entitled “The Role of Technical Standards in Today's Society and in the Future".

He returned to MIT on October 4, 2008 for a 50th anniversary celebration,^[1] including the installation of a plaque on the bridge. Smoot was also presented with an official unit of measurement: a smoot stick.^[2]

Family

His cousin George Smoot won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006.^[3]

See also

• Smoot

Sources

• Biography by ANSI
• Speech for the House
• NPR Interview on December 7, 2005, on the occasion of his retirement.
• MIT tribute page - he was featured on MIT's daily-changing home page on December 19, 2005
• Tavernor, Robert (2007), Smoot's Ear: The Measure of Humanity, [1]

References

1. ^ Say Hello to Mr. Smoot of Smoot Fame
2. ^ Smoot and roll
3. ^ Talk of the Nation (2006-10-06). "Winning the Nobel Prize". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6210148. Retrieved 2006-10-07. 

External links

• "smoot". Sizes.com. http://www.sizes.com/units/smoot.htm. Retrieved 8 July 2010. 

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