Scottish moral philosopher whose Wealth of Nations (1776) provided the foundational analysis of market economies, the division of labor, and the case for free trade — and whose Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) grounded economic behavior in a broader account of human sympathy and ethics.
Adam Smith is simultaneously the most cited and most misread thinker in economics. The man who supposedly said greed is good spent most of his career writing about sympathy, justice, and the moral foundations of social life. Getting Smith right matters because getting him wrong has consequences.