Benjamin Gompertz

(1779–1865; b. London, England; d. London, England) English actuary. Gompertz's parents were Jewish Dutch merchants. Because of his faith he was denied entry to university, but he nevertheless became a member of the LMS when aged eighteen. He joined the Stock Exchange in 1810 and was elected FRS in 1819. As an actuary he was concerned with the expectation of life. Statisticians remember Gompertz for his 1825 'Law of Mortality' (see Gompertz distribution), while animal rights campaigners recall that his youngest brother, Lewis, struck by 'the similitude between man and other animals' was one of the founders, in 1824, of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (now the RSPCA). In 1834 Benjamin was a founder member of the RSS.

Benjamin Gompertz
Born	March 5, 1779(1779-03-05) London, England
Died	July 14, 1865 (aged 86)
Nationality	Great Britain
Fields	Mathematics
Religious stance	Jewish

Benjamin Gompertz (March 5, 1779 – July 14, 1865), was a self educated mathematician, denied admission to university because he was Jewish.^{[citation needed]} Nevertheless he was made Fellow of the Royal Society in 1819. Gompertz is today mostly known for his Gompertz law (of mortality), a demographic model published in 1825. The model can be written in this way:

where N(t) represents the number of individuals at time t, and c and a are constants.

This model is a refinement of the demographic model of Malthus. It was used by insurance companies to calculate the cost of life insurance. The equation, known as a Gompertz curve, is now used in many areas to model a time series where growth is slowest at the start and end of a period.

Gompertz's descendant Simon Gompertz is an economics presenter for the BBC.

See also

• Population dynamics

References

• "On the Nature of the Function Expressive of the Law of Human Mortality, and on a New Mode of Determining the Value of Life Contingencies". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 115: 513–585. 1825. doi:10.1098/rstl.1825.0026. http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-55920. 

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Benjamin Gompertz", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• P.F. Hooker - Benjamin Gompertz, 5 March 1779 - 14 July 1865, 1965

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