Edward Elmer Smith, known in science-fiction circles as "Doc" Smith, was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. At age eighteen he left home and worked briefly as a streetcar conductor before entering the University of Idaho to pursue a degree in civil engineering. He soon left the university and began laying line for a railroad. However, an accident made him unfit for manual labor, and Smith once again changed his career goals. He reentered college, securing a degree in chemical engineering and, upon graduation, acquired a position with the U.S. Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. In 1915 he married Jeanne Craig MacDougall and in 1919 received a doctorate from George Washington University.

Smith worked as a chief chemist for F. W. Stock and Sons, formulating doughnut mixes until the end of World War I. His first novel, The Skylark of Space (1946), written in collaboration with Lee Hawkins Garby, was...