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Esther Elizabeth Pond Smith was born in Craig, Nebraska on December 25, 1899 to Charles and Anna Pond. In her senior year at Plainview High School in Nebraska, Smith took on a job as a rural teacher of home economics. After graduation, she enrolled at Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts in Ames, Iowa, and completed her Bachelor of Science in home economics. In 1935, Smith came to Pullman to become Washington State College’s Extension Economist in home management. During her time in this position, she wrote more than twenty publications for the Extension Service and was published in Kelvinator’s Kitchen Reporter. Most of her articles related to time and motion economy, and streamlining common household tasks. Smith’s work and studies are focused on domestic management. In 1945 she was appointed by the Human Nutrition and Home Economics Division of the United States Department of Agriculture to complete micro-motion studies on food preparation in farm kitchens in order to establish the most efficient arrangement of kitchen equipment. When her husband Stanley A. Smith retired in 1950, the couple moved to Ankara, Turkey. Esther Smith died in Pullman in 1988.