Abstract
Chalmers was born in Anstruther, Fife, and died in Edinburgh. Though he was strongly attracted to mathematics and physics in his youth, he is famous as a theologian and economist and as an active worker in the field of poor relief. Appointed to a parish in 1803, he later moved to Glasgow, where he began a famous and influential experiment in the administration of poor relief through dividing up the large parish of St John into small units and relying on a large number of voluntary helpers. He left Glasgow to become Professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews in 1823; in 1828 he became Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh and in 1843 he was centrally involved in the famous ecclesiastical divisions which produced the Free Church.
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Bibliography
Blaikie, W.G. 1887. Chalmers, Thomas. In Dictionary of national biography, vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Bonar, J. 1894. Chalmers, Thomas. In Palgrave’s dictionary of political economy, ed. H. Higgs. London: Macmillan, 1925.
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O’Brien, D.P. (2018). Chalmers, Thomas (1780–1847). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_351
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_351
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