William A. Smoker Memorial Fund
The William A. Smoker Memorial Fund was established at the UA Foundation after Dr. Smoker's death in 1997. Dr. Smoker's son, Dr. William (Bill) W. Smoker, is a professor of fisheries genetics and aquaculture and the director of the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences' Fisheries Division. Bill Smoker provided the following information about his father and the memorial fund established in his name:
"William A. Smoker was my dad. When he died in 1997, his friends established the W.A. Smoker Memorial Fund at the UA Foundation. He received his B.S. from Berkeley in 1938 and his Ph.D. in Fisheries from the University of Washington in 1955. Between his undergraduate and graduate studies, he was a combat rifleman in the Papua New Guinea campaign, an Army Map Service officer, and a biologist.
"He was a founding fellow of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists in 1956. He was a research salmon biologist for the Territory of Alaska in the late 1950s, the assistant director of the NOAA Fisheries Auke Bay Laboratory in the 1960s, the director of Auke Bay Laboratory in the 1970s, and after his retirement in 1981, he came to quite a few of our Friday seminars at the Juneau Center."