 His brother Bertram Evelyn (“Bill”) Smythies became an ornithologist.His cousins on the Smythies side include Yorick Smythies, Richard Dawkins (a first cousin once removed), Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood.In 1932 Smythies enrolled at Cheltenham College Junior School, transferred to Rugby School in 1936, and thence to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1940 (18) and to University College Hospital, London in 1942 where he studied medicine (19).