Benjamin Gompertz

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Benjamin Gompertz
Gompertz-Makeham law of mortality
Gompertz constant
Spouse
Abigail Montefiore
​
(m. 1810)​
Children3
Scientific career
Fields
Alliance Assurance Company
Royal Astronomical Society

Benjamin Gompertz

Gompertz law of mortality, a demographic model published in 1825. He was the brother of the early animal rights activist and inventor Lewis Gompertz and the poet Isaac Gompertz.[1]

Life

Of the

German Jewish family of Gompertz of Emmerich, he was born in London, where his father and grandfather had been successful diamond merchants. Debarred, as a Jew, from a university education, he studied on his own from an early age, in the writings of Isaac Newton, Colin Maclaurin, and William Emerson. From 1798 he was a prominent contributor to the Gentleman's Mathematical Companion, and for a period won the annual prizes in the magazine for the solutions of problems.[2] Gompertz married Abigail Montefiore (1790–1871) in 1810; they had three children.[2]

In line with his father's wishes, he entered the

Astronomical Society of London. In 1819 he was elected a F.R.S., and in 1832 became a member of the council. The Astronomical Society was founded in 1820, and he was elected a member of the council in 1821.[2]

On the death of his only son he retired from the Stock Exchange, and absorbed himself in mathematics. When the

Alliance Assurance Company (1824), and Gompertz was appointed actuary under the deed of settlement. His management of the Alliance Company was successful, he was consulted by government, and made computations for the Army medical board.[2]

In 1848 he retired from active work and returned to his scientific labours. He was a member of many

learned societies, and was also one of the promoters of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Of the leading Jewish charities he was a prominent member, and he worked out a plan of poor relief,[3] which was afterwards adopted by the Jewish board of guardians.[2]

Gompertz died from a paralytic seizure on 14 July 1865.[2]

Works

A sketch of an analysis, 1820.
Mathematics

From 1806 he was a frequent contributor to the

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society; but his early tracts on complex numbers and porisms (1817–18) were self-published. Gompertz was an old-fashioned Newtonian who retained and defended the notation of fluxions.[2]

Astronomy

For ten years he actively participated in the work of the Astronomical Society, contributing papers on the theory of

Friedrich Bessel. Their efforts, however, led to the complete catalogue of stars of the Royal Astronomical Society.[2]

The Gompertz model

He worked out a new series of tables of mortality for the Royal Society, and these suggested to him in 1825 his law of human mortality, which he first expounded in a letter to Francis Baily. The law rests on an a priori assumption that a person's resistance to death decreases as his years increase. The model can be written in this way:[4]

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

This model is a refinement of a demographic model of

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. The model has been extended to the Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality
.

See also

References

  1. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10934. Retrieved 22 April 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h "Gompertz, Benjamin" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  3. Jewish Chronicle
    , 6 October 1845
  4. S2CID 145157003
    .

External links
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Gompertz, Benjamin". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

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