Ian Simpson Ross (9 August 1930 – 21 May 2015[1]) was a Scottish academic and biographer of Adam Smith.
[2][4] 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.
Under the supervision of Ernest Campbell Mossner, Ross focused on important members of the Scottish Enlightenment,[3][2] and was awarded his PhD in 1960.
[4] His first book was a biography of Lord Kames, which was published in 1972, and he also penned a study of William Dunbar (1981).
Gavin Kennedy said "Ian was the doyen among Adam Smith's modern scholarly biographers.