Simon George Thomas Smith was educated at Solihull School and qualified in Birmingham in 1981, being awarded several prizes. He was the son of Professor Walther Thomas Smith a neuropathologist. He subsequently entered training in cardiothoracic surgery and spent two years as a research fellow at University College Hospital and the Rayne Institute in London, concentrating on the use of photodynamic treatment in bronchial and tracheal tumours. In the year in which he passed the Fellowship of the College (1986) he was working at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow. Simon lived life to the full and had a wide variety of interests, including mountaineering and racing cars. He built a roadster with the help of his wife, Mandy, and he died while a passenger during a demonstration drive in a Lotus replica. He died on 21 July 1990 aged 34 years, survived by his wife, Mandy, who was expecting their child in the December of that year, and two children from a previous marriage.