Mathematics Career
In 1829 he became Professor of Mathematics at Western Reserve College in Ohio. According to Frank Preston Stearns, he became interested in life insurance as a mathematical study and read "the best works on life insurance ... with the same ardor with which young ladies devour an exciting novel."
In the spring of 1852 an insurance broker "placed an advertising booklet in his hand... Elizur Wright looked it over and perceived quickly enough that no company could undertake to do what this one pretended to and remain solvent. The booklet served him for an editorial," and he embarked on a successful crusade to reform the insurance industry.
He developed actuarial tables and the mathematics for calculating life insurance premiums. He campaigned for valuation laws requiring life insurance companies to hold sufficient reserves to guarantee that benefits would be paid, and nonforfeiture laws requiring the companies to provide cash surrender values. He also served as state commissioner of insurance for Massachusetts, from 1858 to 1866.
He invented a form of cylindrical slide rule.
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