Adam Smith (1723-1790) was born in a small village in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. He entered the University of Glasgow at age fourteen and later attended Balliol College at Oxford. After lecturing for a period, he held several teaching positions at the University of Glasgow. His greatest achievement was writing The Wealth of Nations, a five-book series that sought to reveal the true causes of prosperity and which established him as the father of contemporary economic thought.
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