James Adam (7 April 1860 – 30 August 1907) was a Scottish classicist who taught classics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

[1] In 1884 Adam was appointed Junior Fellow and soon thereafter Senior Lecturer in the Classics at Emmanuel College.

Their daughter, Barbara Frances (1897–1988), was the British sociologist and criminologist Lady Barbara Wootton; one of their sons, Captain Arthur Innes Adam, was killed in France on 16 September 1916;[6] and another son, Neil Kensington Adam,[2] became a noted chemist.

Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the Greek text ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought.

[5] He was also a "keen supporter of the claims of women to degrees, when the question came before the senate of the university in 1897"[9] In 1904 and 1905 Adam delivered the Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen, choosing for his subject "The Religious Teachers of Greece".