James Dodson

James Dodson FRS (c.1705–1757) was a British mathematician, actuary and innovator in the insurance industry.

Matthew Maty, in his Mémoire sur la vie et sur les écrits de M. A. de Moivre, wrote that Dodson was a pupil of Abraham de Moivre. He worked as an accountant and teacher. In 1752 George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, a friend of Dodson, became President of the Royal Society, and Dodson was elected a Fellow on 16 January 1755. On 7 August of the same year he was elected master of the Royal Mathematical School, Christ's Hospital, and also of Stone's School there. Dodson died 23 November 1757, being then over forty-seven years of age. He lived at Bell Dock, Wapping.

Having been refused admission to the Amicable Life Assurance Society, because they took no one over 45, he decided to form a new society on a plan of assurance that would be more "equitable". Dodson built on the statistical mortality tables developed by Edmund Halley in 1693. Equitable Life, as it was to be, charged premiums aimed at correctly offsetting the risks of long term life assurance policies. But Dodson made only unsuccessful attempts to procure a charter. The Equitable Life Assurance Society was founded in 1762 to put the actuarial principles that Dodson had developed over the previous decade into practice, by a group of mathematicians and others including Edward Rowe Mores.

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