Adam Smith

Adam Smith was born and lived much of his life in the small town of Kirkcaldy, Fife, which lies across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. Smith’s father, a prominent government lawyer, died shortly before his birth. After secondary school, a classical education at the University of Glasgow, and postgraduate studies at Oxford, Smith began lecturing on rhetoric in Edinburgh. In the 1750s, the happiest period of his life, he became a Professor of Logic and then the Chair in Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, which earned him international recognition. After reading this book, politician Charles Townshend hired Smith to tutor his stepson, the 17-year-old Duke of Buccleuch, during a grand tour of Europe. Smith educated the Duke and prepared him for polite society during three years in Toulouse, Paris, and Geneva, but their trip was cut short before they could reach Italy or Germany. Smith moved home to Kirkcaldy and spend the next decade living on a pension from the Duke while taking care of his elderly mother, leading various intellectual societies, and writing The Wealth of Nations (which he published in 1776). In 1778 he  moved to Edinburgh to serve as Scotland’s Commissioner of Customs. He later became Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh and cofounded the city’s Royal Society. He died in Edinburgh in 1790, shortly after ordering his literary executors to burn most of his unpublished manuscripts.