Edgar Albert Smith, a British conchologist, was the son of the entomologist Frederick Smith. He started his career in the Zoology Department of the British Museum (Natural History), London, in 1867 and remained at the museum until his retirement in 1913. In 1895 he was promoted to assistant keeper and in 1903 was awarded the Imperial Service Order (ISO). He was a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and at various times served as president of the Malacological Society of London (and as editor of its Proceedings) and of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
From 1871 onwards Smith published widely on marine invertebrates, particularly molluscs, producing some 300 papers in the course of his career. Among others he described shells collected during the voyage of the Alert (1884); the bivalves (1885) and Heteropoda (1888) collected during the voyage of HMS Challenger; shells from Barbados (1891); land shells from Borneo (1893); shells from Zomba, Malawi (1898); land and freshwater molluscs of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes (1902); and the brachiopods and molluscs collected by the British National Antarctic Expedition (1907). In 1901 he compiled A guide to the shell and starfish galleries (Mollusca, Polyzoa, Brachiopoda, Tunicata, Echinoderma, and worms) for the museum.
Smith gave special attention to the fauna of the African lakes and the marine shells of South Africa. Several of his papers dealt with South African molluscs, and some of these were published in South Africa. For example, "A list of the species of Achatina from South Africa, with the description of a new species" (Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1890); "Description of a new kind of slug from South Africa" (Ibid, 1892); "Descriptions of new species of South African marine shells" (Journal of Conchology, 1898-1900); "List of species of Mollusca from South Africa" (Proceedings of the Malacological Society, 1903); "On a collection of marine shells from Port Alfred, Cape Colony" (Journal of Malacology, 1904); and two comprehensive papers entitled "On South African marine mollusca, with descriptions of new species" (Annals of the Natal Museum, 1906, Vol. 1(1), pp. 19-72 and 1910, Vol. 2(2), pp. 175-220). He also identified molluscan remains from the post-Pliocene deposits of South Africa and described these in the Transactions of the Geological Society of South Africa (1910, Vol. 12, pp. 112-118) and in the Annual Repost of the Geological Commission of the Cape of Good Hope (1899/1900, p. 61 and 1906, p. 203). Several southern African marine molluscs (e.g., Amphipheras smithi, Scila smithi and a terrestrial species (Achatina smithi) were named after him.
