Kemp Smith was educated at St Andrews, where he was awarded a doctorate for his Studies in Cartesian philosophy of 1902. He held a post at Princeton from 1906 to 1916, before becoming Professor at Edinburgh in 1919. After his Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1918), he produced his definitive translation of the same work (1929). Although he also produced philosophy of his own, he is otherwise remembered especially for The Philosophy of David Hume (1941), a work which set the standard for all subsequent interpretations of Hume.