Adam Smith

Adam Smith (1723–1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and the founder of modern economics. Born in Kirkcaldy and educated at Glasgow and Oxford, he became professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow, where his lectures produced The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759. Two years as tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch took him to France, where he met Voltaire and the physiocrats, and a decade in Kirkcaldy produced An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, which explained the division of labor, free markets and the invisible hand. He ended as a commissioner of customs in Edinburgh and ordered his unfinished manuscripts burned.