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Adam Smith Biography

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SMITH, Adam (1723–90). A British political economist, regarded as the founder of economics as a separate branch of human knowledge. He was born at Kirkcaldy in Fifeshire, Scotland, June 5, 1723. He studied at the University of Glasgow and won there an exhibition on the Snell foundation, which took him to Balliol College, Oxford. There he remained seven years. In 1748 he was in Edinburgh, where he delivered a course of lectures upon rhetoric and belles-lettres. These seem to have given him a reputation as a scholar and to have introduced him to learned and accomplished men, of whom the most famous was David Hume. The friendship thus begun was an important one for Smith, who remained friendly with Hume during his life. In 1751 Adam Smith was appointed professor of logic at the University of Glasgow and a year afterward was transferred to the chair of moral philosophy.

In 1759 he published his first work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments still well-known in the history of ethics. In 1763 he became tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch and accompanied him in France. He spent a year or more in Paris and met the more important men of letters of France. He was particularly attracted by the group who termed themselves Economistes and who are better known as Physiocrats. Quesnay, the leader of the school, and several of his followers were in the circle of Smith's acquaintance. He became familiar with the theories of the Physiocrats, which exercised a great influence upon him. In 1766 he returned to Kirkcaldy. He was now engaged in the preparation of his great work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which first appeared in 1776. The work made a great impression. Five editions were printed during the lifetime of the author, and before the close of the century it had been translated into the principal European languages. (For its place in economic thought, see Political Economy.) In 1778 Smith was appointed a Commissioner of Customs for Scotland, and he took up his official residence in Edinburgh. In 1787 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. He died in Edinburgh, July 17, 1790.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol XXI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 189-190.