Adam Smith was a Scottish economist. He was born in 1723 at Kirkcaldy and died in 1790. Educated at Kirkcaldy and the University of Glasgow in 1740 he went to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1748 he began to lecture in Edinburgh, and in 1751 was chosen professor of logic at Glasgow, where from 1752 until 1763 he was professor of moral philosophy. In 1764 he went abroad with a pupil, the duke of Buccleuch, after which he gave ten years mainly to writing and study. In 1776 the result of his labour appeared in the first scientific work on the principles of economy, 'The Wealth of Nations'. Two years later he was appointed a commissioner of customs, a post he held until his death.
Although remembered as an economist, Adam Smith also enunciated a philosophy of his own, that all our sentiments arise from sympathy, and published his thoughts in 1759 in a book entitled 'Theory of Moral Sentiments'. Research Adam Smith
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