Abraham de Moivre

Religious persecution in France obliged him to move to England (he was an Huguenot). Although he was a competent mathematician, to make a living, de Moivre became a private tutor of mathematics, visiting his pupils or teaching in the coffee houses of London, while trying to obtain an appointment to a Chair of Mathematics at a university.

He is the author of "The Doctrine of Chances: a method of calculating the probabilities of events in play", a probability theory book, said to have been prized by gamblers.

This book came out in four editions, the first in 1711 in latin. Notably, in the English edition of 1756, de Moivre gives the first statement of the formula for the normal distribution curve.

De Moivre also published an article called "Annuities upon Lives", in which he revealed the normal distribution of the mortality rate over a person’s age. From this he produced a simple formula for approximating the revenue produced by annual payments based on a person’s age.

He also is said to have predicted his own death date. He realised that he slept each day fifteen minutes more than the previous, so he thought the date of his death would be the one in which he would sleep the twenty four hours of the day. That is novembre 27th, 1754, as it ocurred.

Rivals and friends
Edmond Halley , best known for computing the orbit of the eponymous Halley's Comet.
Isaac Newton , you know him, don't you?