Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T18:22:19.372Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On the Law of Human Mortality; and on Mr. Gompertz's new exposition of his Law of Mortality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

T. R. Edmonds*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge

Extract

In the last number of the Assurance Magazine (April, 1861), there appears a letter from Mr. Gompertz, in which reference is made to his and my claims to the discovery of the law, or part of the law, of human mortality. In this letter, Mr. Gompertz declares that my claim cannot interfere with his claim, because I had acknowledged the priority of his discovery. I admit the truth of this declaration, and can add thereto, that I also am able to declare, with equal truth, that his claim, as now described by himself, cannot interfere with any claim hitherto advanced by me. The law of human mortality, now claimed to be discovered by Mr. Gompertz, differs materially from the law which I have declared to exist. The two laws are in accordance with one another only at one period of life (extending, say, from the age of 15 to the age of 55 years), and then only in a partial degree. It is in this partial agreement, at this particular period of life, that the priority of Mr. Gompertz's discovery consists. The description of the law of human mortality, as now believed by Mr. Gompertz to exist, is contained in a paper, referred to in the letter above mentioned, and since published (page 454) in the Appendix to the Report of Proceedings of the Fourth International Statistical Congress, held in London in the year 1860.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1861

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)