William Morgan: EighteenthCentury Actuary, Mathematician and Radical

Nicola Bruton Bennetts

To meet William Morgan is to encounter the eighteenth-century world of finance, science and politics. His actuarial calculations underpin our present-day pensions; his scientific investigations are an early link in the chain of experiments leading to the discovery of X-ray; and his outspoken political writings, for which he risked imprisonment, call for universal suffrage and transparency in government finances.