It's Adam Smith's birthday.

At least, we think it is. His birth was registered on 5 June 1723, so it's likely to have been a couple of days earlier. He was raised in Fife, Scotland, by his widowed mother, to whom he remained devoted. He never married, and after his mother died, an unmarried cousin looked after him: he was so steeped in the world of ideas that someone had to.

While still a child he was briefly kidnapped by vagrants, only to be wrested back by his uncle, who summoned up some friends on horseback to help him in the task. Otherwise, his early life was not very dramatic. He studied mathematics and moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, then won a scholarship to go to Oxford, a university he thought worthless, before returning to Glasgow as a teacher.

But there, he wrote a hugely influential book on moral philosophy - which brought him fame and led to him being hired as tutor to the young Duke of Buccleugh, going on the Grand Tour of Europe, and (in the process) collecting a vast amount of information about economies and manners that would make its way into his great treatise, The Wealth of Nations.

You can learn more about Adam Smith, and read his books online, here.