John Pye Smith
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The Rev Dr John Pye-Smith FRS, FGS (May 25, 1774-February 5, 1851) was a Congregational theologian and scholar, and author of many learned works.
Dr John Pye-Smith was theological tutor at Homerton College near Hackney, London for forty-five years between 1805 and 1850, and minister of the Old Gravel Pit Chapel in Chatham Place, Hackney for nearly as long (1811-50). His pupils included William Johnson Fox of the South Place Ethical Society.
The son of a Sheffield bookseller, he was surrounded by books in his youth and, practically self-taught, rose not only to become a dissenting academic and author, but through his interest in science and geology, was elected to become the first Fellow of the Royal Society from a nonconformist background.
He was also elected a Fellow of the Geological Society at a time when there was considerable debate about accepting the idea of geological time, and if so to find ways of reconciling this with the teachings of the Old Testament.
Dr John Pye Smith died in Hackney in 1851 and is buried below a marble chest tomb monument in Dr Watts' Walk, at the Congregationalists' non-denominational garden cemetery in the grounds of Abney Park, Stoke Newington.
