George Francis Hardy

Sir George Francis Hardy (14 December 1855 – 5 October 1914) 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 (with George King) "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. 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.

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.

Publications Memorandum on the age tables and rates of mortality of the Indian census of 1901 The Theory of the Construction of Tables of Mortality : A Course of Lectures (1909) Hardy, George F. and Frank B. Wyatt. "Report of the actuaries in relation to the scheme of insurance against sickness, disablement, etc., embodied in the national insurance bill, 1911" in Institute of Actuaries Journal, July, 1911