{"id":1885,"date":"2016-05-14T18:43:04","date_gmt":"2016-05-14T18:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/?p=1885"},"modified":"2026-03-04T01:24:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T01:24:57","slug":"adam-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/adam-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Smith: A Detailed Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Adam Smith is one of the most important historical figures for liberal thought and economic freedom.\u00a0 He is best known for \u2018Wealth of Nations\u2019, which challenged the role of the government in economics and helped establish the basic foundation of modern capitalism<\/a>. As such, he is often associated with historical events, such as the Industrial Revolution<\/a> and the development of Economic Individualism<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ADAM SMITH – EARLY LIFE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland in June of 1723.  The exact date of his birth is unknown but many historians treat the day of his baptism, June 5th, as his official birthdate.  His father, also named Adam Smith, died two months after he was born, leaving his mother, Margaret Douglas a widow.  Adam Smith pursued schooling from an early age, and attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy from 1729 to 1737.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ADAM SMITH – EDUCATION<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Smith attended the University of Glasgow at the age of 14 and in 1740 he attended the University of Oxford.  After leaving Oxford, he began delivering public lectures in 1748 in Edinburgh, Scotland.  As well, around the same time he began to develop a friendship with David Hume, the famous Scottish philosopher.  The two wrote to each other about a variety of topics, such as: history, economics, politics, etc.  Throughout the 1750s and early 1760s Smith was a professor of logic at the University of Glasgow where he began to develop many of his ideas of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Portrait of Adam Smith by an Unknown Artist (1800)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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ADAM SMITH – WORK AND TRAVELS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 1763, Smith was offered a tutoring position by British politician Charles Townshend for his stepson Henry Scott.\u00a0 Smith accepted the position and spent the next several years travelling Europe with Henry Scott as part of his education.\u00a0 On these journeys, Smith came into contact with several key thinkers and philosophers from the Age of Enlightenment.\u00a0 For example, in Geneva, Smith met with Voltaire, and in Paris, he met with the famous Physiocrats thinkers and philosophers.\u00a0 The physiocrats opposed mercantilism<\/a>, the economic theory of the time, and instead supported free markets without government control.\u00a0 Smith would famously write about Laissez faire economics<\/a>, which he developed from the ideas of the physiocrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘In the Salon of Madame Geoffrin in 1755’ by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier. (1812)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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ADAM SMITH – WEALTH OF NATIONS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Adam Smith’s reputation as an economist rests largely on two important books that have shaped economic theory: ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ and ‘Wealth of Nations’. Published in 1759, ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ explores the nature of ethical judgments and the origin of human morality. It introduced the idea of the ‘impartial spectator’, an imaginary observer used to judge the morality of one’s actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1766, Smith returned to Kirkcaldy, Scotland, where he began writing his most famous work.  Its full title was \u2018An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations\u2019 which is just often shortened to \u2018Wealth of Nations\u2019.  The book was published in 1776 and became one of the most influential economic writings of all time.  It challenged the idea that the government should control the economy and instead proposed the idea of free trade and competition with a lesser role of the government.  The ideas of this book would eventually lay the foundation for the principles of capitalism, which is an economic system that supports the idea of free trade and choice as a way of achieving prosperity.  Like the physiocrats, Smith argued against mercantilism and government control of the economy and instead proposed the idea of the \u2018invisible hand\u2019.  Simply put, the invisible hand is the idea that the market forces of supply and demand should drive the economy of a country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, Smith famously described the efficiency gained through the division of labor using the example of a pin factory. He explained how dividing production processes into distinct tasks significantly enhances productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ADAM SMITH – DEATH AND LEGACY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Adam Smith died on July 17th, 1790 in\u00a0Edinburgh, Scotland.\u00a0 Today he is remembered for his immense contribution to economic theory and the development of free market capitalism, which has developed across much of the world.\u00a0 Many historians view him as one of the great liberal thinkers of the Enlightenment<\/a> and helped the development of classical liberal thought<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ADAM SMITH – INFOGRAPHIC<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Adam Smith Infographic by History Crunch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Smith, an important figure in economics, is best known for his influential work ‘Wealth of Nations’, that shaped the field of modern economics. Smith’s ideas on free markets, the division of labor, and the ‘invisible hand’ have become fundamental economic principles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,100,49],"tags":[18,62,15,17],"class_list":["post-1885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industrial-revolution","category-biography","category-economics","tag-biography","tag-economics","tag-history","tag-industrial-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1885"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6145,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885\/revisions\/6145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}