Smith, Adam 1723-90
Scottish economist and philosopher

Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, the posthumous son of a customs officer. He studied at Glasgow and Oxford, and from 1748 became one of the brilliant circle in Edinburgh which included David Hume, John Home, Lord Hailes, the preacher Hugh Blair (1718-1800) and the historian William Robertson (1721-93). In 1751 Smith became Professor of Logic at Glasgow, later moving to the chair of moral philosophy (1755-64). In 1759 he published his Theory of Moral Sentiments, based on Hume's doctrines. The essence of moral sentiments, Smith argued, was sympathy: a specialized, conscience-stricken sympathy, like that of an impartial and well-informed spectator.

While travelling as tutor to Henry, the future 3rd Duke of Buccleuch (1746-1812), he met Fran�ois Quesnay, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Jacques Necker and others in Paris. In 1776 he watched the illness and death of his friend Hume and edited some of his papers. He also wrote a moving account of Hume's end, which attracted controversy as many resented the idea that an atheist could die with such dignity. Soon after he went to London, where he became a member of the club to which Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick and Dr Johnson belonged.

In the same year (1776) he published a volume of five chapters, which he originally intended to be the first part of a complete theory of society in the tradition of Scottish moral philosophy, and to cover natural theology, ethics, politics and law. This single volume, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, examined the consequences of economic freedom, and saw the division of labour as the main ingredient of economic growth, rather than land or money.

At a public dinner, William Pitt, the Elder (1st Earl of Chatham), invited Smith to be seated first, as 'we are all your scholars'. Smith returned to Edinburgh in 1778 as Commissioner of Customs; he died there and was buried in the Canongate churchyard. He was elected FRS in 1767 and Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1787.

Bibliography: Smith's works (edited by Dugald Stewart in 1811-12) include Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), essays on the formation of languages, the history of astronomy, classical physics and logic, and the arts. His Glasgow Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, Arms (1896) were edited from notes by a student. See also I S Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (1996).