Ian Simpson Ross

Ian Simpson Ross (9 August 1930 – 21 May 2015) was a Scottish academic and biographer of Adam Smith.[1][2]

He was born in Dundee. His father worked in the jute industry and his mother was employed in service. He was educated at Blackness Primary School and was awarded a bursary to Harris Academy.[2][1] In 1950 he went to the University of St Andrews to read English literature after being awarded a state grant. He was awarded a first class honours degree in 1954.[1][3] He was granted a Tyndall-Bruce Scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, where he studied the Scottish poets at James VI's court under the supervision of David Nichol Smith.[2][1][4] He was awarded a BLitt in 1956.[3] He won a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Texas, where he read his PhD. Under the supervision of Ernest Campbell Mossner, Ross focused on important members of the Scottish Enlightenment,[2][1] and was awarded his PhD in 1960.[3]

He was appointed Instructor at the University of British Columbia, where he taught eighteenth-century literature. In 1982 he became head of the English department and in 1993 he was appointed Professor Emeritus of English.[2][1] He was also elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada.[3]

His first book was a biography of Lord Kames, which was published in 1972, and he also penned a study of William Dunbar (1981).[5][6]

His 1995 biography of Adam Smith was the first full-scale biography since John Rae's 1895 work.[7] It was well received and the second edition was published in 2010. Gavin Kennedy said "Ian was the doyen among Adam Smith's modern scholarly biographers. His biography will never be surpassed."[1] In his review, William D. Grampp said Ross' "scholarship is a thing of wonder."[8]

He visited Scotland during the 2014 independence referendum and was a supporter of Scottish independence.[1] In 2015 he died in Vancouver, aged 84, and was survived by his wife and their five children.[2]

Works
  • Lord Kames and the Scotland of His Day (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). ISBN 0198223617
  • (editor with E. C. Mossner), Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977; second edition, 1987). ISBN 0198281854, ISBN 0198285701
  • (editor with W. P. D. Wightman and J. C. Bryce), Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). ISBN 0198281870
  • William Dunbar (Leiden: Brill, 1981). ISBN 9004062165
  • The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995; second edition, 2010). ISBN 0198288212, ISBN 0199550034
  • (editor), On the Wealth of Nations: Contemporary Responses to Adam Smith (Bristol: Theommes Press, 1998). ISBN 1855065665

Notes
  1. Alisdair Steven, ‘Obituary: Professor Ian Ross, academic’, The Scotsman (6 June 2015). Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  2. Harry McGrath, ‘Ian Simpson Ross’, The Herald (2 June 2015). Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  3. Margaret Schabas, ‘Obituary of Ian Simpson Ross’, Adam Smith Society. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  4. Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900–1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 460.
  5. Duncan Forbes, ‘Review: Lord Kames and the Scotland of His Day by Ian Simpson Ross; Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century by David Johnson’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Dec., 1973), pp. 868-869.
  6. Anne Hudson, ‘Review: William Dunbar by Ian Simpson Ross’, The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 34, No. 136 (Nov., 1983), pp. 485-487.
  7. Jeffrey T. Young, ‘Review: The Life of Adam Smith by Ian Simpson Ross’, History of Economic Ideas, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1998), p. 153.
  8. William D. Grampp, ‘Review The Life of Adam Smith by Ian Simpson Ross’, Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Oct., 1996), p. 540.
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