Adam Smith

Smith was born in the Scottish port of Kirkcaldy after his father's death and raised by his mother; at three he was reportedly carried off by gypsies and recovered. At fourteen he entered Glasgow University and studied moral philosophy under Hutcheson, then went to Oxford, where he found the professors had 'given up altogether even the pretence of teaching'. In 1751 he returned to Glasgow as professor of logic, then of moral philosophy, lecturing on theology, ethics, jurisprudence and political economy.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments appeared in 1759, arguing that moral judgement arises from sympathy, imagining ourselves in another's place, and that we judge our own conduct through an 'impartial spectator' within. The book made his name, and a nobleman hired him at a handsome salary to tutor his son on a European tour. Bored in Toulouse, he began The Wealth of Nations; in Paris he met Quesnay and the physiocrats. Back home he took ten years to finish the book, published in 1776.

The Wealth of Nations holds that a nation's wealth is not gold but the annual product of its labour, that division of labour is the source of productivity, that each person pursuing his own interest is led by 'an invisible hand' to promote the public good, and that government should dismantle monopolies and regulations and confine itself to defence, justice and public works. He did not idolise merchants; the book is wary of their greed and collusion and troubled that division of labour dulls the worker. He ended as a Scottish commissioner of customs and had sixteen volumes of manuscripts burned before he died. He never married and lived with his mother.