The Life Of Adam Smith: The Father Of Economics

The Life of Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a Scottish philosopher and economist. He is most widely known as the father of economics and for his work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In this book he proposes ideas that continue to play a huge role in our economy today.

Becoming One of the Greatest Economist There is no record of Smith’s actual date of birth, but his baptism took place on June 5th, 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland (Ross, 1995). His parents were Margaret Douglas and Adam Smith (Ross, 1995). His father passed away before he was born so Smith was raised by his mother and many “tutors and curators” (Ross, 1995, p. 2). Smith’s education started in Kirkcaldy at the one room school houses in the town (Ross, 1995).

While he did not obtain a tutor position, Smith did begin giving rhetoric lectures at Edinburgh University (Ross, 1995). The success of his lectures reached Gasglow and the university offered him the position of Chair of Logic (Ross, 1995). He began giving lectures at the university, and was even elected Chair of Moral Philosophy (Ross, 1995). In 1764, Smith elected to leave the world of academia in favor of tutoring the duke of Buccleuch (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008).

Smith begins to tutor the duke of Buccleuch and follows him on his travels to France (Ross, 1995). It is believed that during his time in France, Smith may have begun writing him most prominent work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Ross, 1995). Smith continued to tutor and accompany the duke on his travels into Geneva, which allowed him to conduct more research for a his most famous work (Ross, 1995). The duke of Buccleuch progressed under Smith’s tutelage between 1764 and 1767, and did not require his teaching any longer so Smith made plans to move back to Kirkcaldy (Ross,

The first idea that he explores is the division of labor (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008). Smith believed that wealth was directly linked to creating more divisions of labor (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008). Smith uses pins to illustrate this theory: “ten workers could produce 48,000 pins per day if each of eighteen specialized tasks was assigned to particular workers. Average productivity: 4,800 pins per worker per day. But absent the division of labor, a worker would be lucky to produce even one pin per day” (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008). Division of labor allows for “increased dexterity of workers,” the production of goods in less time, and the creation of better equipment to produce said goods (Adam Smith Theory of Development in Economics,