Prof. dr. A. Smits, 1907Smits in 1931 on his 25th year as professor, seated left to right E.H. Büchner, J. P. Wibaut, F.E.C. Scheffer, Mrs Smits, Andreas Smits, Ada Prins and J.M. Bijvoet.
Smits was born in Woerden and attended high school in Utrecht. He studied chemistry and received a degree from the University of Utrecht, and a doctorate from the University of Giessen (1896) with a dissertation on "Untersuchungen mit dem Mikromanometer." He then worked as a chemist in the Amsterdam Municipal Gasworks before joining the University of Amsterdam in 1901. He became a professor at the Delft University of Technology in 1906 and worked there until his retirement in 1940. He published Die Theorie der Allotropie (1921) and Die Theorie der Komplexität und der Allotropie (1938).