23 February 2023
English Heritage is honouring the life of Richard Price, a key figure in the development of actuarial science, marking today’s 300th anniversary of his birth. Louise Pryor, Immediate Past President at the IFoA, joined Welsh heritage, biographers and members of the local community at a ceremony on 22 February 2023 to unveil a commemorative English Heritage blue plaque at London’s Newington Green, where Price lived for some 30 years.
Price was born in Wales in 1723 and, while not an actuary, helped define the role of an actuary in the formative years of the profession. He did so by advising the Society for Equitable Assurances, established 1762, the first to operate life assurance on a scientific basis. This is the society which first designated the job title ‘Actuary’ in insurance.
Price essentially wrote the job description for what the modern Actuary should do in the role to sustain life assurance enterprise viably, including reviewing mortality experience of policyholders and making a regular valuation of the financial condition of the company to meet its future claims. He then recommended his nephew William Morgan to the role which Morgan performed for 55 years. Price turned his advice into a book, Observations on Reversionary Payments, 1771 (later editions were published up to 1783 with Morgan updating Price’s work after his death), providing new mortality tables and critiques of contemporary annuities and schemes for widows.
The new blue plaque, unveiled by broadcaster Huw Edwards, commemorates Price as a preacher, philosopher, mathematician and radical. He was well-known for contributions to discourse for a benevolent society and for championing the ideals of the American and French Revolutions.
Find out more about Richard Price and other historical actuarial figures via the IFoA’s library service, in the highlights of the Equitable Life archive or our historical collections.