Edmond Halley Demography
This article allowed the British government to sell life annuities at an appropriate price based on the age of the purchaser. Halley's work strongly influenced the development of actuarial science. Actuaries use maths to study the risks in the insurance  and financial industries. The construction of the life-table for Breslau, which followed more primitive work by John Graunt, is now seen as a major event in the history of demography. Demography is the statistical study of human populations.