Myrtil Maas

Myrtil Maas (1792 – 27 February 1865) was a French mathematician, actuary, and Jewish community leader.

Myrtil Maas
Born1792 (1792)
Tomblaine, Meurthe, France
Died27 February 1865(1865-02-27) (aged 72–73)
Paris, France
Alma materÉcole normale supérieure

Biography

Myrtil Maas was born in 1792 to a Jewish family in Tomblaine, Meurthe.[1] A student at the Lycée Charlemagne, he was admitted in 1813 to both the École polytechnique and the École normale in Paris, choosing the latter. He studied at the École normale until the political upheaval of 1815 caused the suspension of the school. In that year, when walking with some of his schoolfellows in the Champ de Mars, where the troops were drilling, he was accidentally shot in the leg, and the wound never perfectly healed.[2]

Being a Jew, he was unable to obtain a chair in mathematics; but he found employment first in a porcelain factory and then as a private tutor. In 1818 he was employed as actuary by the newly-formed Compagnie générale des assurances sur la vie et contre l'incendie, a Paris insurance company. He joined Olinde Rodrigues to form an committee to watch over and control the operations of the company, and the principles they established for insurance tariffs were soon adopted by all the leading French life insurance companies.[3] Together, they produced the actuarial tables that would be used by all French insurance companies throughout the century, which were eventually published in 1860 and had seven editions until 1933.[4][5]

Maas laboured actively in the interests of the Jews, and played a leading role in the Consistoire central israélite in the 1830s and 1840s, serving as its vice-president from 1843.[6] He died on 27 February 1865 from a malady that developed from his wound.[2]

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; Dunbar, Newell (1901–1906). "Maas, Myrtil". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

  1. Cotelle, Toussaint-Ange (1877). "Membres décédés". Mémorial de l'Association des anciens élèves de l'École normale 1846-1876 (in French). Versailles: Cerfs et fils. pp. 188–194.
  2.  Singer, Isidore; Dunbar, Newell (1901–1906). "Maas, Myrtil". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
  3. Ratcliffe, Barrie M. (1972). "Some Jewish Problems in the Early Careers of Emile and Isaac Pereire". Jewish Social Studies. 34 (3): 189–206. JSTOR 4466717.
  4. Altmann, Simon (January 2007). "Olinde Rodrigues, mathematician and social reformer". Gazeta de matemática. 152. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
  5. Martin, Thierry, ed. (2003). Arithmétique politique dans la France du XVIIIe siècle (in French). Paris: Institut national d'études démographiques. p. 493. ISBN 978-2-7332-1027-7. ISSN 1622-6267.
  6. Chouraqui, André (1965). Cent ans d'histoire: L'Alliance Israélite Universelle et la renaissance juive contemporaine (1860–1960) (in French). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. p. 16. OCLC 301324105.
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