George Adam Smith was born in Calcutta on 19 October 1856. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and he studied at Edinburgh University and New College, Edinburgh, and also at the Universities of Tuebingen and Leipzig. A period of travel followed in Egypt and Syria, and then in 1880 he became an assistant at the Free West Church in Brechin, Angus. Between 1880 and 1882 he was a Hebrew tutor at the Free Church College, Aberdeen, then Minister of Queens' Cross Free Church, 1882-1892. Smith was appointed to the Chair of Old Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the United Free Church College, Glasgow, in 1892, and throughout the 1890s and into the new century he lectured extensively in the USA. He was appointed Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Aberdeen University in 1909, and held these offices until 1935. His publications include Historical geography of the Holy Land (1894), the two volumes of The twelve prophets (1896-1897), Modern criticism and the preaching of the Old Testament (1901), Syria and the Holy Land (1918), and with John Buchan he wrote The Kirk in Scotland (1930). Smith was knighted in 1916, and in 1933 he was made Chaplain to the King in Scotland. The Very Rev. Sir George Adam Smith died on 3 March 1942.

From the guide to the Papers of Very Rev. Sir George Adam Smith (1856-1942), 1880-1932, (Edinburgh University Library)