1723–1790

Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher and political economist, born in Kirkcaldy in 1723; his exact birth date is unknown, but he was baptized on June 5. He studied at Glasgow and Oxford, later holding the chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith examined how specialization, exchange, capital, and institutions shape prosperity. His pin-factory example showed how dividing work into specialized tasks could sharply increase output, while the wider book also considered the social costs of commercial life. Smith belongs in this library because his account of division of labour became a starting point for later thinking about work design, productivity, and industrial organization.