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Adam Smith (1723–1790) was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, studied at Glasgow and Oxford and became professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow. His Theory of Moral Sentiments made his name in 1759, and a few years later he travelled in France as tutor to a young duke, meeting Voltaire and the French economists.

Back in Scotland he spent ten years on An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), which explained the division of labour, markets and free trade and founded modern economics. He ended his life, with some irony, as a commissioner of customs in Edinburgh.