Colin John Smith was a professor of oral pathology at the University of Sheffield. He was born on 7 June 1938 in Croydon, Surrey, the son of Rowland William John Smith and Doris Emily Smith née Lover. He attended Purley County Grammar School for Boys and then studied dentistry at the Royal Dental Hospital School of Dental Surgery. He was a house surgeon at the Royal Dental Hospital from 1961 to 1962. He was then a Medical Research Council scientific assistant from 1962 to 1963 and a cancer research student at the Royal College of Surgeons of England from 1964 to 1968. From 1968 to 1969 he was a Wellcome travelling research fellow in the department of oral pathology at the Royal Dental College, Copenhagen. From 1969 he was a Nuffield dental research fellow in the department of morbid anatomy at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London. In 1971 he became a senior lecturer and research fellow in the department of oral medicine and pathology at Guy’s Hospital dental school. In 1973 he was appointed as a professor of oral pathology at the University of Sheffield, a post he held until his retirement in 2003. At Sheffield he was dean of dental studies in the school of clinical dentistry from 1978 to 1984 and from 1988 to 2000 and deputy dean of the faculty of medicine from 2000 to 2002. He was director of the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital, Central Sheffield University Hospitals NHS Trust, from 1998 to 2001. Smith was president of the British Society for Oral Pathology from 1980 to 1981, of the odontology section of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1990 to 1991 and of the International Association of Oral Pathologists from 2000 to 2002. He was chair of the Dental Education Advisory Council from 1990 to 1992 and editor-in-chief of the *Journal of Oral Pathology and Medicine* from 1993 to 1999. A fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, he became a fellow of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1997 and was awarded a CBE, also in 1997. In 1998 he became a foundation fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Sheffield in 2004. Outside his professional work he enjoyed lawn tennis, walking, gardening, listening to classical music and theatre. He was married twice. In 1962 he married Mary Margaret Kathrine MacMahon, by whom he had three daughters. Following a divorce, in 1995 he married Eunice Turner née Acaster. Smith died on 15 December 2018. He was 80.