Abraham de Moivre | Biography

Moivre, the son of provincial surgeon, was born in Vitry-le-François in France and raised as a Huguenot (French Protestant) in an ever growing atmosphere of Roman Catholic intolerance. When the Edict of Nantes (a 1598 decree granting a measure of religious freedom to Huguenots) was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685, Moivre was imprisoned for several months. Upon his release he left France, for England where he remained for the rest of his long life. In England, Moivre became a close friend of Isaac Newton, whose great work, Principia, Moivre mastered by ripping out individual pages of the text, according to contemporary accounts, in order to be able to carry them around and study them in his spare moments. Moivre's mathematical acumen was also admired by Edmond Halley who read Moivre's first paper on Newton's calculus to the Royal Society. Halley's support of the young mathematician ensured Moivre's election to the Royal Society in 1697. Unfortunately, Moivre's high-level contacts in the elite world of scientists and mathematicians never enabled him to secure a permanent teaching position. In fact, Moivre spent his entire life in relative poverty, scraping out a living as a tutor and as a consultant to insurance companies and gambling houses.

Moivre's most important mathematical work was accomplished in the areas of analytical trigonometry and probability theory. His first book, Doctrine of Chances (1718), was based on earlier work by Christiaan Huygens and Montmort and included innovations that were used in probability theory and statistics for the next 200 years. His contributions included an approximation to the binomial probability distribution that used what became known as the normal distribution. Implied in his method is the parameter now called the "standard deviation," though it was not labeled as such by Moivre. He also derived an approximation for computing factorials that is now known as Stirling's formula. His book contained the definition of statistical independence as well as many problems with dice and other games of chance.

Moivre was the first to express trigonometric functions using a system of algebra, in the same manner that René Descartes had applied algebra to geometry. Implicit in his work is the well-known De Moivre theorem that refers to the nth power of an expression involving trigonometric functions and the imaginary unit i. This was the beginning of the development of the analytic side of trigonometry. Moivre also had a great interest in mortality statistics for which he derived mathematical formulas for complex problems involving the maturation of insurance policies and annuities with various combinations of interest rates, age, and capital. The work on these problems by Moivre and other mathematicians became the basis for subsequent commercial insurance applications in England.

The many disputes over priority and controversies about copyright with other mathematicians, notably Thomas Simpson (1710-1761), increasingly embittered the aging Moivre, as did his failure to acquire the recognition he deserved. His poor financial situation never improved, and Moivre died a disillusioned man in 1754, at the age of 87.