Abraham demoivre

Abraham de Moivre (May 26, 1667, Champagne - November 27, 1754, London) was a French mathematician, known for his eponymous formula, for his contributions to the theory of probability and because he predicted the date of his death through a statistical calculation.

Biography

Doctrine of chances, 1761

His father, who was a surgeon, sent him to the Protestant academy at Sedan and there he studied from 1678 to 1682. He then studied Logic at Saumur for the next two years and in 1684 attended the Collège de Harcourt. And, although there is no evidence that he obtained any academic degree, the truth is that he studied with Jacques Ozanam.

Known for De Moivre's formula and for his work on normal distribution and probability, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1697 and was a friend of Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley.

"Go with Abraham of Moivre to consult this. He knows much more than I do about these things."

Isaac Newton

De Moivre published the book of probability The Doctrine of Chances and, being a Calvinist, had to leave his native country after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by that of Fontainebleau (1685). He spent the rest of his life in England. The truth is that all his life he was poor and he was a regular customer of Slaughter's Coffee House , where he earned some money playing chess. He was a teacher of the British mathematician and actuary James Dodson (1705–1757).

He died in London, being buried in St Martin-in-the-Fields, although his body was later moved. It is often said that he predicted the date of his death by observing that he slept fifteen minutes more every day than the night before and calculated that he would die that day that he slept twenty-four hours. Supposedly, he concluded that it would be 73 days later: November 27, 1754. However, although his health certainly weakened and he came to need more than 20 hours of sleep a day, no contemporary source relates this episode, so it is very likely be an exaggeration.