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Posts feed200 years of Gompertz
Today is the 200th anniversary of Benjamin Gompertz's reading of his famous paper before the Royal Society of London. Generations of actuaries and demographers are familiar with his law of mortality:
\[\mu_x = e^{\alpha+\beta x}\qquad(1),\]
Another look at the Gompertz model
The year 1825 was a significant one not only for actuaries but for the wider scientific community: Benjamin Gompertz published his landmark paper on the graduation of human mortality (Gompertz, 1825). There were at least three completely new ideas in his paper. First, he gave his famous law of mortality. To quote Gompertz: