The Future of ASTIN*

Hans Bühlmann

ASTIN Bulletin, 1982, vol. 13, issue 2, 75-80

Abstract: My assistants at ETH have a wall calendar—not with the usual pictures of Swiss mountains, hills and lakes, but with “quotations for intelligent people”. Recently, the quotation for the week read as follows: “Even the future is no longer what it used to be in the past”.Observe that also in this supposedly intelligent approach it seems impossible to speak about the future without referring to the past. I shall not deviate from this rule. Of course, my task is greatly simplified by the fact that Paul Johansen has just entertained you in a charming way about the past 25 years of ASTIN and the earlier endeavors leading to the foundation of ASTIN.In the year 1693, Edmond Halley constructed the first mortality table based on mortality data from Breslau which he had obtained through the intervention of Leibniz. This can be regarded as the starting point of actuarial science. In my opinion it can however not be considered as the starting point of the actuarial profession. Why? Yes, Halley's table was used for some eighty years because subsequent information coincided with his estimate of mortality. Yes, De Moivre, in his classic textbook of 1725, performed ingenious calculations of annuities, based on the same table. Yes, Süssmilch published the first basic and substantial work of demography in 1741 but—here comes the big but—no government (and nobody else sold annuity insurance at that time) made use of the available scientific method to calculate annuities. Perhaps the first statistical results to be taken seriously were the Northampton tables of 1780, devised by Richard Price. Incidentally, this date coincides reasonably well with the first valuation by William Morgan in 1786. Hence, I think that either of these dates may be taken, at the earliest, as the start of the actuarial profession, a profession being by definition a dedicated group of people accepted by society for the performance of a particular skill. Let me make my point explicit: We have historical evidence of the existence of actuarial science about 90 years prior to the emergence of the actuarial profession.

Date: 1982
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