Adam Smith Business School Launch Event

On Wednesday 6th February 2013, the Adam Smith Business School was officially renamed in honour of the “Father of Modern Economics” and Glasgow University’s most famous alumnus, Adam Smith.

Staff, students, alumni, local businesses and the public attended the official launch event, two hundred and seventy five years after Adam Smith first joined the University of Glasgow as a fourteen-year-old student.

To mark this special occasion, the University held a ceremony in the Bute Hall, with guest of honour Mike Russell, Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, delivering an engaging public lecture entitled,

“Enlightened Imagination – Scotland’s Contribution to a Better World”.

Mr Russell’s lecture applauded the legacy of Adam Smith, his involvement in the Scottish Enlightenment and its continued relevance to Scottish education. A full summary of Mike Russell’s speech can be found here: www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Speeches/adam-smith-business-school060213

Professor Farhad Noorbakhsh, former Head of School, commented:

“The Adam Smith Business School is committed to celebrating the academic tradition of Adam Smith at the University of Glasgow. Adam Smith is recognised worldwide as one of the most influential figures to emerge from the Scottish Enlightenment and the field of Economics.

“We are delighted to launch the Business School to commemorate the close ties he had with the University. Adam Smith continues to inspire people from all over the world and naming the Business School in his honour is a fitting way to mark his legacy.”

The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Michael Russell MSP, added:

“I am convinced that Adam Smith would have been honoured by the renaming of the business school and would see this as a development that is worthy of the Scottish Enlightenment. So, I’m delighted to be part of this celebration of the great economist and philosopher, and to mark his contribution not just to the University of Glasgow but to Scotland and the rest of the world.”

Adam Smith and the University of Glasgow

Adam Smith attended the University of Glasgow as a student between 1737 and 1740. A year later he became Professor of Moral Philosophy, a post he held until he left academia to become tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch in 1764.

During his time at the University, Smith lectured on a wide range of subjects from logic and jurisprudence, history and linguistics to philosophy and ethics.

Today Adam Smith is best known his economic writings, especially his book The Wealth of Nations, which earned him the title of “Father of Modern Economics”. However Smith first established his reputation at Glasgow as a moral philosopher.

In 1759 he published Theory of Moral Sentiments in which he argued that society is held together by a unified ethical conduct of “mutual sympathy” or empathy. Such was the response to the work that he attracted students to Glasgow from around Europe.

Smith re-established his association with the University of Glasgow in 1787 when he became Rector of the University. In a letter of thanks he described his Glasgow days as; 

"By far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honourable period of my life.”

But it is not as a political economist that Adam Smith is best remembered. The Wealth of Nations remains one of the most influential economic texts around the world.

Lasting legacy

By renaming the business school as the Adam Smith Business School, the University hopes to carry on the legacy of Adam Smith by producing interdisciplinary research and holistic thinkers who engage with society and enrich the world. In particular, the School will place a new emphasis on Smith’s work and, more generally, the Enlightenment. This will include the creation of an Honours course in 2013 - 2014 which focuses on the work of past leading philosophers and economists. The Business School will also host a series of public lectures on Adam Smith to engage with wider society. 

First edition Wealth of Nations

On display at the launch event was a beautiful copy of the first edition of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, donated to the University of Glasgow by alumnus Stuart Leckie, OBE.

Here is an abstract from the University of Glasgow Library blog, written by Robert Maclean, Assistant Librarian, detailing the importance of the book:

The Wealth of Nations hardly needs an introduction – it is regularly described as one of the most important and influential books ever written and, as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) comments:

“... is still one of the few works in its field to have achieved classic status, meaning simply that it has sustained yet survived repeated reading, critical and adulatory, long after the circumstances which prompted it have become the object of historical enquiry”.

The Wealth of Nations, published in the same year as the American Declaration of Independence (1776), was intended as a thoroughgoing enquiry into the nature of wealth and how its benefits should be measured and judged. Smith was vexed by a straightforward conundrum, as the ODNB describes:

“While there is no difficulty in explaining how the rich and powerful come to enjoy the fruits of others’ labour, how is it that in civilized societies even the poorest members enjoy more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than an African king?”

The work has come to be most closely associated with a single idea: the invisible hand. The exact meaning of this catchy metaphor (which appears just once in the whole work!) has been hotly contested and over the years the phrase has taken on a life of its own. As a result Smith, the Wealth of Nations and the invisible hand have become synonymous with free market self-regulation and the benefits to all of mutual self-interest.

Smith has very close links with the University of Glasgow: he studied here as an undergraduate before returning to teach logic and moral philosophy. It is very appropriate then, that this wonderful copy of his great work should end up in the University Library and we are very grateful to Stuart Leckie for donating it. Stuart, like Adam Smith, studied here at Glasgow, graduating with a BSc in Mathematics in 1967. A qualified actuary, he is currently the Chairman of Stirling Finance, a Hong Kong-based pensions and investments advisor and has been a great supporter of the University contributing to the Chancellor’s Fund and sponsoring a Talent Scholarship.

The donated copy has ownership that can be traced right back to the late 18th century and it has literally travelled the world! Its earliest known owners were the Bell family of Woolsington, Northumberland; by the 1920s it was in the library of Viscount Mersey at Bignor Park, Sussex, before crossing the Atlantic to enter the collection of the avid bibliophile Richard Epstein. Sold by Epstein in 1992, it then seems to have navigated the Pacific to reach Hong Kong where it was purchased for us by Stuart Leckie!

We are fortunate to hold a number of important works by Smith including four further copies of the first edition of the Wealth of Nations (an impressive total considering just 750-1250 copies were likely printed), Robert Burns’ copy of the Theory of Moral Sentiment and letters from Adam Smith to his friend and fellow Scottish Enlightenment luminary, David Hume.

A full list of Adam Smith related items held by the University Library and Archive Service is available on the University of Glasgow website: www.gla.ac.uk/services/specialcollections