Adam Smith The British philosopher and economist Adam Smith was born in kirkcaldy, Scotland. He was educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford. In 1751 he became a professor at Glasgow. There he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiment in 1759. This philosophical work gained Smith an appointment in 1764 as tutor of the young duke of Buccleuch. The tutoring took Smith to France, where he started writing The Wealth of Nations in 1776. It was the first complete work on political economy. The book discusses the relationship between freedom and order, analyzes economic processes, and attacks the British mercantile system’s limits on free trade. All three