Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, a small town on the east coast of Scotland. Most of the members of Smith's family (including his father, who died the year Smith was born) were involved in the business of customs and excise, making sure that import and export duties were paid on goods. This was a subject Smith would write much about in his greatest work, The Wealth of Nations.
Adam Smith's Education and Career
At the age of fourteen Adam Smith enrolled at Glasgow University. He went on to study at Balliol College in Oxford University for another six years, before returning to Glasgow to teach. His professorship was in Logic at first, but he soon he moved to Moral Philosophy, the position he held for the rest of his time at Glasgow University.
While at the university he became good friends with David Hume, another great Scottish philosopher of the day. Scotland had lost its own parliament earlier in the century, so the great thinkers and influential men of the day instead met in clubs where new ideas were discussed with friends. Among Smith's friends were other figures from the Scottish Enlightenment such as Joseph Black the chemist and James Hutton the geologist.
In 1763 Smith left his post at the university to accompany the young Duke of Buccleuch around Europe as his tutor. It was very fashionable for young nobles to undertake a “grand tour” of Europe at this time, and the Duke's stepfather was prepared to pay for the best possible tutor. The trip was valuable for Smith because he was able to meet many of the great French Enlightenment thinkers, such as Voltaire, d'Holbach, and the economic philosophers Quesnay and Turgot, who were part of a school called the Physiocrats.
Adam Smith's Philosophical Works
Smith started work on his greatest work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations during this trip, and finished it over a number of years after his return to Britain. He was already well known for his earlier work Theory of Moral Sentiments, which had gained him a great deal of admiration. It was this book which had made the Duke of Buccleuch's stepfather so keen to hire Smith as his stepson's tutor. On its publication in 1776, Wealth of Nations was an immediate success, and five editions were produced within Smith's own lifetime. Smith intended to complete his philosophical series with a work on jurisprudence, which he never finished, but lectures he had given on the subject were published after his death.
Smith never married. After the success of Wealth of Nations he was appointed customs commissioner for the capital city, Edinburgh, which was a great honour and allowed him a comfortable retirement, although it was rather ironic considering that his greatest work had criticised import and export restrictions. He died in 1790 at the age of 68.
Source: M Skousen (2007) The Big Three in Economics
