Math & science · 1693

Halley's life table

Halley builds a mortality table from Breslau records and prices life annuities.

Following John Graunt's bills of mortality (1662), Edmond Halley tabulated survival by age. It founded actuarial science and the measurement of life expectancy.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Probability theory 1654

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Life expectancy in the UK since 1543 Latest: 81.3 years (2023) Source: Our World in Data

Life expectancy at birth Latest: 73.2 years (2023) Source: Our World in Data

World population Latest: 8.09B people (2023) Source: Our World in Data