Susan G. Smith
Susan Gower Smith (9 December 1897 – 3 October 1983) was an American medical researcher, instructor and nutritionist known for developing novel therapies on pellagra and cheilosis. She also developed further experimental and clinical studies on B-vitamin deficiencies (especially nicotinic acid/niacin and B-6).
Biography
Smith was born on 9 December 1897 in Greenville, South Carolina to Arthur Gaillard Gower and Rosa Belle Waldrop.
On 12 September 1923, she was married to David Tillerson Smith and became his research assistant at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. They were both Quakers and had one daughter named Rosalind.
On 3 October 1983, Smith died in Durham, North Carolina at the age of 85.
Research
Smith’s research focused on vitamin deficiencies, their clinical manifestations, and vitamin-based therapies. Working in the 1930s and 1940s, she contributed to early discoveries linking specific B-vitamins to nutritional diseases such as pellagra and cheilosis.
In 1937, Smith co-authored one of the first reports demonstrating that pellagra could be successfully treated with nicotinic acid (niacin), helping to confirm niacin deficiency as the cause of the disease. She later described how niacin deficiency affected the skin’s sebaceous glands, providing histological evidence that connected vitamin deficiency to glandular dysfunction and dermatologic symptoms. In 1939, University of Perugia professor Osvaldo Polimanti nominated Smith alongside her husband David and a colleague Julian Meade Ruffin for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for such research.
Smith also studied other B-complex vitamins. Her 1940 work showed that cheilosis (angular stomatitis) responded to treatment with synthetic vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), distinguishing it from other deficiency disorders. Earlier, in 1932, she described a new symptom complex in rats deprived of “vitamin G” (now identified as riboflavin), contributing to the classification of vitamin-deficiency syndromes in experimental animals.
In addition to clinical and experimental research, Smith examined the effects of heat sterilization on vitamin potency. Her 1938 study demonstrated that autoclaving could reduce the activity of nicotinic acid, influencing how vitamins were handled in laboratories and food preparation. Through these studies, Smith helped establish the physiological and clinical importance of B-vitamins and their role in preventing and treating deficiency-related diseases.