1. Huston Cummings Smith was a scholar of religious studies in the United States, He authored at least thirteen books on world's religions and philosophy, and his book about comparative religion, The World's Religions sold over three million copies as of 2017.
Huston Smith spent the majority of his academic career as a professor at Washington University in St Louis, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Syracuse University.
On May 31,1919, Huston Cummings Smith was born in Dzang Zok, Suzhou, China, to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there.
Huston Smith taught at the University of Denver from 1945 to 1947, and then at Washington University, for the next 10 years.
In 1958, Huston Smith was appointed professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he remained until 1973.
In 1964, during a trip to India, Huston Smith stayed in a Gyuto Tibetan Buddhist monastery.
Huston Smith returned to record the chanting in 1967 and asked acoustic engineers at MIT to analyze the sound.
Huston Smith has called this the singular empirical discovery of his career.
In 1973, Smith moved to Syracuse University, where he was Thomas J Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy until he took emeritus status in 1983.
That year, Huston Smith moved to Berkeley, California, where he remained a visiting professor of religious studies at the University of California, Berkeley until his death.
In 1997, Huston Smith entered into an agreement with the Syracuse University Archives to donate his papers, resulting in a large collection of published books, articles, reviews, or endorsements.
In 1947, before moving from Denver to St Louis, Huston Smith set out to meet with Heard.
Huston Smith was told to look up Swami Satprakashananda of the Vedanta Society of St Louis once he settled in St Louis.
Huston Smith developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon and Ananda Coomaraswamy.
The group began experimenting with psychedelics and what Huston Smith later called "empirical metaphysics".
The experience and history of the group are described in Huston Smith's book Cleansing the Doors of Perception.
Huston Smith was a practicing Christian, with a Vedantic understanding, who credited his faith to his missionary parents who had "instilled in me a Christianity that was able to withstand the dominating secular culture of modernity".
Huston Smith produced three series for public television: The Religions of Man, The Search for America, and Science and Human Responsibility.
Huston Smith attended local churches, including Trinity United Methodist, First Congregational Church, and Epworth United Methodist.
Huston Smith was named to be one of the first recipients of the Order of Universal Interfaith and Universal Order of Sannyasa's Interfaith-Interspiritual Sage Award in January 2010.
Huston Smith received the award at his home on February 23,2010.
The Pacific Coast Theological Society celebrated "the lifetime of achievements of Professor Emeritus Huston Smith by considering the relationship between theology, mythology, and science" in a special session in 2012.