Edward Smith was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the son of staunch Presbyterians of British ancestry. The following winter, his family moved to Spokane, Washington, and, in 1902, to Seneaquoteen, Idaho, to farm. He received two degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Idaho in 1914. He married in 1915. One evening, while he and his wife were visiting friends, a discussion about space travel led to Smith agreeing to co-author a novel with one of the friends, although after getting about a third of the way through, they abandoned it. Smith went on to receive a Master's degree in Chemistry from George Washington University in 1917 and a doctorate in Chemical Engineering in 1918. In 1919, he became chief chemist for F. W. Stock & Sons of Hillsdale, Michigan. That same year he resumed writing his first novel, The Skylark of Space, which he finished in 1920, although multiple submissions failed to get it published until 1928. He continued to write and publish stories through the 1930s. In 1936 he took a job as a food technologist at the Dawn Doughnut Company of Jackson, Michigan, while continuing to write and sell fiction. During World War II, he worked for the U.S. Army, and after the war he took a job with the J. W. Allen Company, which he held until his professional retirement in 1957. After his retirement he and his wife moved to Clearwater, Florida in the winters and Seaside, Oregon in the summer. He continued to write until his death in 1965.