John Graunt

[3] Graunt, along with Sir William Petty, developed early human statistical and census methods that provided a framework for modern demography.

[4] This was remarkable considering the Bills of Mortality did not include age at death, thus Graunt used his knowledge of mathematics to create such a table.

On 5 February 1661, Graunt presented fifty copies of his book to the Royal Society of London, to which he was subsequently elected a fellow in 1662 with the endorsement of King Charles II.

One of his daughters became a nun in a Belgian convent and Graunt decided to convert to Catholicism at a time when Catholics and Protestants were struggling for control of England and Europe, leading to prosecutions for recusancy.

John Aubrey reported that he was "a pleasant facetious companion and very hospitable" and noted that his death was "lamented by all good men that had the happinesse to knowe him.

Graunt investigated if the sudden increase in deaths due to rickets in the Bills of Mortality was actually the result of misclassifying corpses who were said to have died from "Liver-grown" and "Spleen."

Some of Graunt's tables are the only resource for population data for certain periods of time, due to lost records in the Great Fire of London.

After the publication of Graunt's work, France began to collect more descriptive and consistent censuses, though it is unknown if there was a direct connection between these two events.

[8] Tribute to Graunt's pioneering work was paid by Sir Liam Donaldson in 2012 on the tenth anniversary of the Public Health Observatories.

Sir Liam Donaldson paid tribute to Graunt's pioneering work in 2012 on the tenth anniversary of the Public Health Observatories.