 He was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1947 for the last.Smyth was born February 10, 1895, in Clinton, New York, to Ruth Anne Phelps and Charles Henry Smyth Jr., a professor of geology at Hamilton College.Woodrow Wilson, then President of Princeton University, convinced Smyth "pére" to join the faculty at Princeton, and in 1905 the family moved to Princeton, New Jersey.