Benjamin Gompertz

Benjamin Gompertz (* March 5, 1779 in London, † July 14, 1865 in London) was a mathematician and autodidact.

Life and work

Because he was a Jew, he was denied access to the University. Nevertheless, he was in 1819 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was influenced by the works of Isaac Newton, Colin Maclaurin and Augustus De Morgan.

In his work he dealt with Fourier series, the design and the properties Astronomical instruments. In 1820, he used methods of analysis for the study of life chances. In 1824 he was an actuary and chief accountant of an insurance company. He also worked in London as a stockbroker.

Even today known Gompertz and his work in the field of population dynamics through the growth model named after him Gompertzsche of 1825. This model is related to the later emerged and well-known logistic growth model by Pierre -François Verhulst.

It can be formulated mathematically as follows:

Describes the number of individuals at the time t and r is the growth rate instrinsische. K is the capacity, which is the state of equilibrium.

By the term that describes the capacity limit, the probable cause of epidemics that Thomas Robert Malthus postulated in his demographic model, modeled.

In a Science article to Gompertz ' model was published in 1992. The population dynamics has been studied in Drosophila melanogaster by the flies were kept in a plurality of closed spaces, and the dead flies were counted daily. The scientists began with 1,203,646 flies and listed every day lying on the ground flying. After 171 days, all flies were dead

The idea of the equation is that the mortality rate of each individual of a population with advancing age increases exponentially.

The notified him often after Euler - Gompertz constant = 0.596347 ... is not found in his works.

Gompertz was an early member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1834 and a founding member of the Royal Statistical Society since 1820.