The Romantic Period of the early 1800s was marked by a morbid fascination with mortality and death. Poets, novelists and other artists tackled the eternal void head on, rather than whisking such dark topics under the proverbial rug.

With death in vogue, even mathematicians took a stab on the beauty of ceasing to be. In 1825, British autodidact Benjamin Gompertz found the risk of death increases exponentially with age. After the age of 30, his depressing model shows, the risk of dying on a