After graduating from Middlebury College with a major in mathematics and doing graduate work in statistics at the London School of Economics, I realized I wasn’t competent to be a mathematician. The natural conclusion was to combine math and business, and I recalled the notice at Middlebury about actuarial science, a rather dreary sounding profession dealing in death data. But returning from London I was up against a career choice, and I recall thinking how life insurance must be a noble business, dedicating itself to the relief of widows and orphans. Little did I realize at the time how misplaced this thought was.
