Who is the father of economics?

Adam Smith is considered to be the father of economics. This is not because Adam Smith was the first person to consider many of the ideas he is credited with, but instead because he was the first person to put many of those ideas into a format that could easily be read and understood.
Smith was a proponent of a free market and "laissez-faire" policies in which the government had little involvement in the economy. Smith believed in the "invisible hand," which would guide the economy through competition and supply and demand. In his thinking, individuals acting in their own self-interest were also working in a way that was best for society. For example, one could not charge too much for a good or people would not buy it, thus depriving the seller of a profit and ultimately leading to their own failure.
Smith's thinking also focused on the idea of division of labor, which gave birth to modern ideas on manufacturing. Smith argued that one person working on a product that requires multiple steps could only make a limited amount per week. Smith further argued that if the steps were broken up and each step assigned to a different worker, who could then become especially skilled in their specific step, production would be much greater.
For his ideas regarding the free market, supply and demand, and division of labor, as well as his ability to express these ideas, Adam Smith became known as the father of economics. Many of Smith's theories, although hundreds of years old now, are still relevant to economics today.
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Most people would say that Adam Smith is the father of economics. However, there were others who came before him. One of those people was Richard Cantillon. He was an Irish banker and merchant who wrote a document four decades before Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations.
Around 1730, Cantillon wrote a document in French titled Essai sur la nature du commerce in général. While this was not published due to censorship restrictions of that time period, it was circulated in literary circles and in intellectual circles. This treatise has been referred to as “the first systematic presentation of the field of economics.” He was able to free economics from being intertwined with ethical and political concerns. He was also one of the first people to use the tool of economic abstraction, which is now referred to as economic reasoning.
Therefore, Richard Cantillon can be called the father of economics.