Adam Smith

Adam Smith was born at Kirkcaldy in Scotland in 1723, after his father's death; he never married and lived all his life with his mother. At four, it is said, he was carried off by gypsies and fortunately recovered. He studied at Glasgow and at Oxford, became professor of logic at Glasgow at twenty-eight and later professor of moral philosophy, and was a close friend of Hume. In 1764 he resigned his chair to become tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch and travelled with him in France and Switzerland, meeting Voltaire and Quesnay and the other Physiocrat economists. Back home, he spent ten years in seclusion in his native town writing The Wealth of Nations. He was famously absent-minded; it is said that he once walked out in his dressing gown, lost in thought, and came to himself only in a town some fifteen miles away.