Elizur Wright III (12 February 1804 – 22 November 1885) was an American mathematician and abolitionist. He is sometimes described in the United States as "the father of life insurance", or "the father of insurance regulation", as he campaigned that life insurance companies must keep reserves and provide surrender values. Wright served as an insurance commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Early life

Wright was born in South Canaan, Connecticut, whose father was also named Elizur Wright, and his second wife Clarissa Richards (1771–1843). Wright was one of 10 children; six were half-siblings by his father's first wife. His father was a 1781 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale College, and was known for his mathematical learning and devotion to the Calvinist faith. In 1810 the family moved to Tallmadge, Ohio, and the younger Elizur worked on the farm and attended an academy that was conducted by his father. The famous abolitionist John Brown attended the academy in Tallmadge with Elizur. His home served often as a refuge for fugitive slaves.

In 1826, the younger Wright graduated from Yale and began to teach: first for two years in Groton, Massachusetts, where he met and married Susan Clark, the first college in northern Ohio. It was during this time that Wright encountered the writings of William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison's small book, Thoughts on African Colonization, persuaded Wright that slavery should immediately be abolished, and that the American Colonization Society's effort to transport free blacks to an African colony was both unethical and impractical.

Garrison's pamphlet and his new newspaper, The Liberator, had other influence on Western Reserve College. In 1832, college pastor and professor of sacred literature (Bible) Beriah Green preached four abolitionist sermons clearly inspired by Garrison. The uproar this created, which was followed nationally, led to Green's resignation. Under pressure from conservative trustees, he left to become president of the Oneida Institute, where as a condition of his acceptance of the post, he was free to preach "immediatism", immediate abolition. The Oneida Institute focused on preparing future abolitionists, which Green felt was a moral and religious obligation.

The school's most distinguished professor, President Charles Backus Storrs, professor of theology, "bemoaned the fact that 'nothing is done in [the] college but discuss abolition and colonization'". He contracted tuberculosis, took a leave of absence, and died within six months.

Inventions

thumb|The Arithmeter, a high resolution cylindrical slide rule invented by Wright and patented in 1869. He sold it to insurance companies for $500.00, though only about 20 were made.

Between 1853 and 1858, besides editing the Railroad Times, he gave his attention to invention and mechanics, constructing a spike-making machine, a water faucet, and an improvement in pipe coupling. He patented the last two, and manufactured them for a short time.

Life insurance

According to Frank Preston Stearns, Wright 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 wherein Elizur Wright looked it over and perceived quickly enough that no company could undertake to do what this one pretended to and remain solvent. At age 40, Wright visited the Royal Exchange in London to investigate the life insurance industry. It was on this trip where he saw an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph for the Sale of 42 Old Life Insurance Policies in which old men were auctioning off their life insurance policies to investors after faithfully paying premiums all their lives. Elizur recognized that these life insurance policy owners were too old to work and could no longer afford their premium payments but were not yet dead to collect the benefit. As a result, the policy owners looked to speculators or investors. Wright recognized and wrote about the fact that life insurance policy owners were not able to obtain as much as half of the value that should be in these policies in his book Politics and Mysteries of Life Insurance.

To Wright, this was unconscionable, and upon his return to America, he began campaigning for a cleanup of the life insurance business, by requiring insurers to pay “surrender values” to policyholders on request and to hold adequate reserves to do so. Wright realized how easy it was to for insurance carriers to cheat, so he devised formulas for calculating the reserves and created statutory capital requirements for the industry. Ultimately, the life insurance industry accepted Wright's reforms. Wright served as an insurance commissioner for the State of Massachusetts from 1858 to 1866.

He devised a new formula for finding the values of policies of various terms, known as the “accumulation formula,” and, in order to facilitate his work, invented and afterward patented (1869) the “arithmeter,” a mechanical contrivance for multiplication and division, based on the logarithmic principle, a form of cylindrical slide rule.

Public parks

Wright, a member of the Forestry Association, was instrumental in obtaining the Massachusetts Forestry Act of 1882. He initiated and promoted plans for making Middlesex Fells, an area north of Boston bordering Malden and Melrose, into a public park; although he did not succeed during his lifetime, the plan was carried out later and Middlesex Fells is Middlesex Fells Reservation to this day.

Other activities

Wright served as an officer of the National Liberal League.

Along with his rationalist approach to insurance and religion, Wright was an ardent advocate of a phonetic writing system he called "phonotypy." A column written in this system appeared in almost every issue of his newspaper, the Chronotype (1846–1850).

Writings

  • La Fontaine, Fables (verse translation, 2 vols. 8vo, Boston, 1841; 2nd ed., New York, 1859)
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Ballads, and other Poems (introduction, London, 1844)
  • A Curiosity of Law (1866)
  • Savings Banks Life Insurance (1872)
  • The Politics and Mysteries of Life Insurance (1873)
  • Myron Holley, and what he did for Liberty and True Religion (1882)

In addition, he wrote many pamphlets and reports.

Notes

References

Attribution

Further reading

  • Wright, Philip Green and Elizabeth Quincy, Elizur Wright, the Father of modern Life Insurance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937.
  • Stearns, Frank Preston, "Elizur Wright" in Cambridge Sketches, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1905, pp. 286–308.
  • The Fables of La Fontaine, translated by Elizur Wright; Project Gutenberg text.
  • Cambridge Sketches by Frank Preston Stearns; has a section on Elizur Wright.
  • Actuary Hall of Fame contains a brief account of Wright's life.
  • Insurance Hall of Fame laureate page on Elizur Wright
  • Elizur Wright Business Papers at Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School.
  • Elizur Wright Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress.