Adam Smith

A Fifer by origin, Adam Smith was educated at Glasgow and Oxford universities. In 1746 he moved to Edinburgh and earned his living as a lecturer in moral philosophy. He became friends with Adam Ferguson, William Robertson and other ‘literati’ of the Scottish Enlightenment. 

Smith was Professor of Logic at Glasgow University from 1751-64, and then travelled in Europe, meeting with leading thinkers of the Age of Reason in Paris, Geneva and Toulouse, including D’Alembert, Turgot, Mirabeau and Voltaire. After his travels, he returned to Edinburgh and worked there after 1778 as a commissioner of customs. He was also elected Rector of Glasgow University in 1787.

Smith’s greatest work was ‘The Wealth of Nations’ (1776), one of the few works in its field to achieve classic status. In this book he expressed the view that governments should not interfere with free-market practices: this theory is the basis of capitalism, and of much modern economics.  

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