George Francis Hardy


Sir George Francis Hardy was a British actuary, Egyptologist and amateur astronomer. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1877 and was President of the Institute of Actuaries from 1908 to 1910.

Career

Aged 15, Hardy joined the British Mutual Empire Life Office and later qualified for the Institute of Actuaries, after passing his first exam in 1874 and becoming a Fellow in 1880. In that year he published "Notes on the practical application of Mr Makeham's Formula to the Graduation of Mortality Tables" in which both practical methods and the theory of actuarial science were extended. This theory is now called the Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality.
Following years as a tutor and in private practice, Hardy was elected President of the Institute of Actuaries in 1908. He advised Governments, and was instrumental in the work that lead to the National Insurance Act 1911. A bronze bust of Hardy was sculpted by Gilbert Bayes for the Institute. Hardy was a Chairman of the Actuarial Advisory Committee to the National Health Insurance Joint Committee, a role for which he was awarded the Order of the Bath in the 1914 New Year Honours.
He was made a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society on 9 February 1877. His interest in astronomy had started early, with a copy of Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy that was dated in his own hand when he was a teenager. In 1874, he suggested a new method of determining the Sun's distance from the Earth using solar parallax, which was published in The English Mechanic and World of Science.
Hardy's interest in Egyptology led to suggesting a method for determining the age the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Based on astronomical evidence, he suggested that the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt would have started around 3,700 BC. This was between two other estimates: 2,700 to 2,840 and 4,731 BC. Today the start of the Fourth Dynasty is dated to 2613 BC.

Personal life

Hardy was born in Islington and died at Edwardes Square, Kensington, London, where he had lived. He was educated at a school at which his father was the head teacher.
He married Jane Ann Lester in 1883, who was a half sister of Muriel Lester.

Publications