James Dodson (mathematician)

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

Dodson built on the statistical mortality tables developed by Edmund Halley in 1693.

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.

Its provenance was that Warner had left it to Herbert Thorndike, at whose death it came to Richard Busby, and finally was bought for the Royal Society; but for some years it had been lost.

This volume is devoted to problems relating to annuities, reversions, insurances, leases on lives, etc.. His Accountant, or a Method of Book-keeping, was published 1750, with a dedication to Macclesfield.

Another work, An Account of the Methods used to describe Lines on Dr. Halley's Chart of the terraqueous Globe, showing the variation of the magnetic needle about the year 1756 in all the known seas, &c. By Wm.

At a meeting of the general court holden in Christ's Hospital 15 December 1757 a petition was read from William Mountaine, where it was stated that Dodson died 'in very mean circumstances, leaving three motherless children unprovided for, viz.

Dodson's eldest son, James the younger (maternal grandfather of Augustus De Morgan), succeeded to the actuaryship of the society in 1764, but in 1767 left for the custom house.