Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher and political economist of the Enlightenment. Trained at Glasgow and Oxford, he lectured at Edinburgh before holding the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow. His first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), grounded ethics in sympathy—the human capacity to share others' feelings. His major work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), examined markets, the division of labour, and the "invisible hand," a phrase for unintended aggregate outcomes of self-interested action. He later served as a Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh, where he died.