Scottish economist and philosopher who was the founder and leader of the classical school of economics. He was born in Kirkcaldy, a Fife town to the north of Edinburgh, the only son of a Customs Commissioner who died before his birth, leaving his mother to be a major influence throughout 61 years of his life. He was educated at the local burgh school and at Glasgow University from 1737 to 1740 under Francis Hutcheson, professor of moral philosophy, whose utilitarian ideas were to influence the early stage of Smith's economic theorizing. An unhappy period as Snell Exhibitioner at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1740 to 1746 enabled him to spend long solitary hours in acquiring the basis of his erudition. Returning to Scotland, he was successively professor of logic, from 1751 to 1752, and professor of moral philosophy, from 1752 to 1764, at Glasgow University. His wide duties as a professor included lecturing on jurisprudence which he broadly interpreted to include economics, as the…