Adam Smith was one of the most creative thinkers of all time and he had a rich background to support his brilliant mind. His theories and ideas have helped shape the fundamentals of economics we experience everyday. Adam Smith's writings and "invisible hand" concept are part of the foundation of which economists are able to understand the workings of our current economics system.
The first true economist's life began on the east coast of Scotland in 1723. Adam Smith's father died before his birth and was considered a "comptroller of customs" (Landry). After graduating from Glasgow at the age of seventeen, Adam was sent to Oxford on a scholarship While at Oxford, Adam gained a strong learning of Greek and later became interested in David Hume's work. These interests proved to be only the beginning of Smith's journey into a lifetime surrounded by new ideas and knowledge.
In order to even further enrich his educational background, at the age of twenty-eight Smith became a professor of logic at Glasgow. The following year, in 1754, he took the Chair of Moral Philosophy and five years later went on to publish his Theory of Moral Sentiments, a work about the standards of ethical conduct that holds a society together. Surprisingly, most economists left this work unread; those who did read it found it superficially inconsistent with The Wealth of Nations (Smith's second book published in 1776) and were confused with Smith's failure to relate the books to each other. Little did readers know this professor of logic was preparing to offer several economic ideas that would shape the views of many (Wheatsheat). .
Looking back on Adam Smith's life, there is some evidence of what Smith had up his sleeve. It is true that he wrote many essays on philosophical and literary subjects. The discovery of some of Smith's lecture notes on justice and rhetoric suggest that he may have been working on a complete system of social science (Landry).