Annuities on Lives: with Several Tables, Exhibiting at One View, the Values of Lives, for Different Rates in Interest
by Abraham de Moivre
| Annuities on Lives | ||
 at the College of William & Mary. |
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| Author | Abraham de Moivre | |
| Date | 1752 | |
| Edition | 4th | |
The French mathematician Abraham de Moivre (1667-1754) was born in Vitry-le-François, Champagne to a Huguenot family.[1] He "pioneered the development of analytical trigonometry - for which he formulated his theorem regarding complex numbers - [and] devised a means of research into the theory of probability."[2] As an 18-year-old, he was imprisoned for his faith after King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes which had given Protestants the right to worship without persecution. He spent a year in prison and fled to England upon his release.
In London, de Moivre became a close friend of Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley. In 1697, de Moivre was elected to the Royal Society and in 1712 was appointed to settle the bitter dispute between Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over the priority for the systematization of calculus. Although a talented mathematician, de Moivre spent the majority of life in relative poverty, prevented by his French nationality from obtaining a position at an English university.[3]
De Moivre first published Annuities on Lives, a work primarily concerned with mortality statistics, in 1725. In this work, de Moivre laid the mathematical foundations of the theory of annuities (fixed sums of money paid to a person on a yearly basis). He devised formulae based on a hypothesized law of mortality and constant rates of interest on money. [4]
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
See also
References
- ↑ “Moivre, Abraham De (1667-1754)”, The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Abington, United Kingdom: Helicon, 2014), accessed April 14, 2015.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Eli Maor, Trigonometric Delights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 80.
- ↑ “Moivre, Abraham De (1667-1754)”.
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