Throughout his long and active career Smith cultivated a deep interest in the history of his discipline and inculcated this perspective in his students through his teaching and prolific writing in the field. An ardent bibliophile, Smith collected books, manuscripts, portraits, autographed letters, and memorabilia of famous chemists for use in his classes and for research.

Today's chemists, working in a highly specialized and frenetic world, may find Smith's devotion to studying the history of chemistry a curious affectation. The explanation for his sustained interest lies in the values that Smith and other chemists of his generation brought to their work. These values sprang from their shared experiences in American colleges and German universities in the late-nineteenth century. Edgar Fahs Smith and many other aspiring scientists of his time completed their doctoral training at the University of Göttingen. Their time in German laboratories gave them a new vision of scholarly research, programs for institution building, and a commitment to the moral and cultural value of university study that permeated German academe. Smith and his colleagues, Theodore W. Richards at Harvard, Charles F. Chandler at Columbia, and Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins, played leading roles in the transformation of American academic life at the turn of the century. They were comfortable with the production of new Ph.D.s and the publication of research, yet still sensed that graduate study in chemistry in the United States was thought to lack the moral value of studies in the traditional liberal arts.

To combat this idea, Edgar Fahs Smith used "historical chemistry," as he called it, to remind new chemists of the humanistic side of their endeavor and to counter a view of scientists in American universities as industrial technicians. Thus, his avocational interest complemented his professional role. Smith expressed these sentiments in his last book, Old Chemistries (New York, 1927):

The criticism that chemistry is absolutely commercialized is frequently heard and, further, that it is the commercial value of the science alone which claims the thought of chemists. Such views are widely prevalent. But other ideas exist, and chemistry teachers especially know that to them the discarded 'old chemistries' bring many other messages, messages in history, in philosophy, in economics, in social relations, in art, in international relations, in literature, and in a wide and extensive culture.

His collection of classic texts, images, and related material was stored in his office in the Harrison Laboratory. This attractive and comfortable room was filled to overflowing with antique furniture, portraits of chemists and other memorabilia, and was, in the words of a contemporary, ". . . a perfect expression of his own ideals."

Following Smith's death his library was given to the University of Pennsylvania with an endowment through the generosity of his widow. It reopened as the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection in the History of Chemistry on March 1, 1931.