On an unfair supression of due acknowledgement to the writings of Mr. Benjamin Gompertz

Abstract

In 1839, in the Penny Cyclopædia (article “Mortality”), I wrote as follows, referring to Mr. Gompertz's well-known hypothesis on the law of mortality:—“We enter into some detail of it the more readily, that it is necessary as an act of justice to Mr. Gompertz, whose ideas have been adopted by a recent writer on the subject, without anything approaching to a sufficient acknowledgment.”

Babbage among the insurers: Big 19th-century data and the public interest

“…Edmonds’s Discovery of a numerical law regulating the existence of every human being (1832b) mentioned Price and Gompertz as predecessors but staked its claim to novelty on the strength of the data that allowed the three constants identified by Gompertz to be computed: ‘At present, I think that there are no observations strong enough in accuracy to contend against the apparent universality of the Theory’ (Edmonds, 1832a: xvi). Edmonds took Gompertz's silence on the issue to mean that he had accepted that his law had been superseded; however, Gompertz's friends – above all the Professor of Mathematics Augustus De Morgan – took offence on his behalf, accusing Edmonds of plagiarism, and mounting a campaign against him which would reignite decades later (De Morgan, 1860). 28 The first issue of the journal published by the Institute of Actuaries in 1851 featured an article attempting to adjudicate, which gave Edmonds credit for doing the kind of gruelling work that more elevated mathematicians (such as Gompertz) perhaps shirked.…”