March 16, 1888

A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, Thomas William Smillie was hired at the age of twenty-seven as a photographer by the Smithsonian Institution, where he worked from approximately 1869 until his death in 1917. Smillie's duties and accomplishments as a photographer and as the institution's first curator of photography were vast: He photographed museum installations and specimens collected by the Smithsonian, created reproductions for use as printing illustrations, documented important events, acted as a chemist for the institution's scientific researchers, and traveled to photograph scientific research trips.