Robert Fox Research Articles

Dulong-Petit’s law and Boltzmann’s theoretical proof from the Kinetic Theory of Gases

The main aspect that we will address in this work is the introductory presentation of the empirical law of the specific heats of material bodies, published by Dulong and Petit on April 12, 1819, in the magazine Comptes Rendus. The analytical demonstration of this law appeared for the first time in 1866 in the Doctoral Thesis of the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, according to the research carried out by Cássio C. Laranjeiras and presented in his Doctoral Thesis in 2002. In the introduction we discussed how Dulong’s law and Petit played a key role in the subsequent development of a new physics (Quantum Mechanics), when Max Planck changed his research program from electrodynamics to thermodynamics, evidenced in the book: Black Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912, published by Thomas Khun in 1978. Between 1900 and 1912, we observed that fundamental works published by Albert Einstein, Henri Poincaré and Peter Debye explained the mathematical relationship of this empirical law based on Planck’s hypothesis of the quantum of action of blackbody radiation. Despite the controversy over the authorship of the law, whether it would have been formulated in advance by Arago, we agree with Robert Fox that it was the results of Dulong and Petit’s experiments that led to the formulation of the law.

Çok Çalışma Etiğinde Anilik: Robert Fox’un “A Fable” Adlı Kısa Kısa Hikâyesi

This article highlights that individuals make sudden decisions in their rushing world that has hard work ethic in itself. Fables have moral lessons as in Robert Fox’s “A Fable” short short story. This article concerns the tendency of hard work ethic to earn money by conforming to the rat-race of living. It analyzes a short short story in which the American Dream is hidden in this rushing world. The reality of the pursuit of American Dream of success is quite different. It does not bring success for everyone all the time. “A Fable” is quite extraordinary: Having the setting of the subway, it depicts the hastiness of working life in which individuals become like a machine to work hard. As they intend to earn their living by working hard, they ultimately aspire to become a wealthy individual. Although this short short story is quite short it has a semantic depth in which there are implicit meanings in the written text. Flowing life on the subway has optimistic outlook. Similar to the other individuals in Manhattan, these individuals pursue the wish of actualizing the myth of the American Dream to have success and become wealthy through their hard work. However, they ultimately notice that they actualize most of the things opposite to the American Dream of success in their lives.

Challenging discourses

Robert Fox shares with us his journey, day-to-day work and his goals, which are grounded in challenging the often-inaccurate discourses around, firstly, men in childcare, and secondly, the nannying profession.

Cannabis Use for Symptom Management Among People with Multiple Sclerosis (PwMS): A 2020 NARCOMS Survey

Research Objectives To evaluate the prevalence of cannabis use for MS symptom management and factors associated with its use among current users in the North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis (NARCOMS) registry. Design An online, supplemental survey regarding use of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing cannabis for MS symptoms. Setting A voluntary, self-report registry for PwMS. Participants Active, US NARCOMS participants (N=6934), of whom 3249 (47%;) responded to the survey. Interventions Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures The prevalence of, and reasons for, using or not using cannabis, as well as behaviors and attitudes of current users. Findings were summarized using descriptive statistics. Results The proportion of respondents who reported using cannabis for MS symptoms was 31%. Among the 69% of respondents who did not use cannabis for MS symptoms, the most common reasons were insufficient efficacy (40%) or safety (27%) data. Overall, 636 respondents (20%) reported current use (within last 30 days). Smoking (33%) and eating (20%) were the two most common primary modes of administration. A portion of current users started cannabis before using a prescribed MS symptom management drug (23%) or rehabilitation therapy (45%). The most common target symptoms were spasticity (80%), pain (69%), and sleep problems (61%). Of the 511 current users treating spasticity, 321 (63%) were using additional symptom management therapies (59% using drugs; 11% using physical/occupational therapy) and 190 (37%) were using only cannabis. Conclusions Although concerns about efficacy, safety, and other factors prevent some PwMS from trying cannabis, 31% have tried and 20% are currently using non-FDA-approved cannabis products for MS symptom relief. Of those currently using cannabis to treat spasticity, over a third were using only cannabis. Funding: Greenwich Biosciences, Inc. Author(s) Disclosures Joanne Wagner, Kathryn Nichol, and Joshua Steinerman have a financial relationship with Greenwich Biosciences. Amber Salter has nothing to disclose. Robert Fox has a financial relationship with AB Science, Actelion, Biogen, Celgene, EMD Serono, Genentech, Immunic, Novartis, Sanofi, and TG Therapeutics. Gary Cutter has a financial relationship with Antisense Therapeutics, Astra-Zeneca, Avexis Pharmaceuticals, Biodelivery Sciences International, Biogen, Biolinerx, Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics, Bristol Meyers Squibb/Celgene, Click Therapeutics, CSL Behring, Galmed Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, Genzyme, GreenValley Pharma Ltd, GW Pharmaceuticals, Klein-Buendel Incorporated, Mapi Pharmaceuticals LTD, Medday, Medimmune/Viela Bio, Merck, Merck/Pfizer, Merck/Serono, Immunic, Neurim, Neurogenesis LTD, Novartis, Novartis, OncoImmune, Ophazyme, Opko Biologics, Osmotica Pharmaceuticals, Perception Neurosciences, Reata Pharmaceuticals, Reckover Pharmaceuticals, Recursion/Cerexis Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron, Roche, SAB BIotherapeutics, Sanofi-Aventis, Teva pharmaceuticals, TG Therapeutics, VielaBio Inc, and Vivus. Karry Smith has a financial relationship with Abbott/St Jude, Boston Scientific, Greenwich Biosciences, and Medtronic. To evaluate the prevalence of cannabis use for MS symptom management and factors associated with its use among current users in the North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis (NARCOMS) registry. An online, supplemental survey regarding use of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing cannabis for MS symptoms. A voluntary, self-report registry for PwMS. Active, US NARCOMS participants (N=6934), of whom 3249 (47%;) responded to the survey. Not applicable. The prevalence of, and reasons for, using or not using cannabis, as well as behaviors and attitudes of current users. Findings were summarized using descriptive statistics. The proportion of respondents who reported using cannabis for MS symptoms was 31%. Among the 69% of respondents who did not use cannabis for MS symptoms, the most common reasons were insufficient efficacy (40%) or safety (27%) data. Overall, 636 respondents (20%) reported current use (within last 30 days). Smoking (33%) and eating (20%) were the two most common primary modes of administration. A portion of current users started cannabis before using a prescribed MS symptom management drug (23%) or rehabilitation therapy (45%). The most common target symptoms were spasticity (80%), pain (69%), and sleep problems (61%). Of the 511 current users treating spasticity, 321 (63%) were using additional symptom management therapies (59% using drugs; 11% using physical/occupational therapy) and 190 (37%) were using only cannabis. Although concerns about efficacy, safety, and other factors prevent some PwMS from trying cannabis, 31% have tried and 20% are currently using non-FDA-approved cannabis products for MS symptom relief. Of those currently using cannabis to treat spasticity, over a third were using only cannabis. Funding: Greenwich Biosciences, Inc.

The Technical University of Munich under National Socialism ed. by Wolfgang A. Herrmann and Winfried Nerdinger

Reviewed by: Die Technische Hochschule München im Nationalsozialismus [The Technical University of Munich under National Socialism] ed. by Wolfgang A. Herrmann and Winfried Nerdinger Robert Fox (bio) Die Technische Hochschule München im Nationalsozialismus [The Technical University of Munich under National Socialism] Edited by Wolfgang A. Herrmann and Winfried Nerdinger. Munich: TUM University Press and NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, 2018. Pp. 368. Die Technische Hochschule München im Nationalsozialismus [The Technical University of Munich under National Socialism] Edited by Wolfgang A. Herrmann and Winfried Nerdinger. Munich: TUM University Press and NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, 2018. Pp. 368. Germany's Technische Hochschulen (higher technical schools) have never wanted for historians. The literature on them, much of it celebratory, is vast, and the flow shows no sign of diminishing. Today's Technical University of Munich, founded as a Polytechnic School in 1868 and renamed the Technische Hochschule of Munich (THM) in 1877, then the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 1970, is no exception. Die Technische Hochshule München im Nationalsozialismus stands both within and outside the celebratory tradition. As the catalog of an exhibition marking the TUM's 150th anniversary, it has its celebratory side. But the joint sponsors of the exhibition, the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism (headed by Winfried Nerdinger) and the TUM (under rector Wolfgang Herrmann), had other aims besides celebration: an archive-based reexamination of the THM in the twelve years of Nazi rule that would explore the relationships between science and power in this mostcontested of contexts and test what survives of any idea of the neutrality of scientific and technological knowledge under a totalitarian regime. The result is chastening. Biographical sketches of professors and leading THM figures reveal a level of party membership that went hand in hand with apparent acquiescence in the dismissal of seventeen academic staff on grounds of race or political unreliability, and the withdrawal of four former students' doctorates. Notable among a minority of professors who successfully steered clear of Nazi ideology were Hans Fischer, Nobel Prize-winner in 1930 for his work on pyrrole and synthetic haemin, and Jonathan Zenneck, radio physicist and director of Munich's Deutsches Museum since 1933, seemingly protected as much by the brilliance of his public lecture-demonstrations as by his science. But these were outliers in an institution whose academic profile was fashioned by the nexus of political, industrial, and military interests of which it was an integral part. In a secondary literature that no longer sees good science and technology as incompatible with the priorities of dictatorship, areas of excellence are no surprise. Walter Hieber's laboratory for heavy metal research was a conspicuous beneficiary of the drive for self-sufficiency that began with Hitler's four-year plan in 1936. And intellectual as well as material advantages came easily to a school that was the trusted favorite of men such as Fritz Todt, former student and mastermind of the Reich's Autobahnbuilding program, and Willy Messerschmitt, graduate and part-time [End Page 910] extraordinary professor whose personal standing and closeness to Hitler contributed to Munich's preeminence, alongside Berlin, in aeronautical engineering. What still has the capacity to shock, however, is the fertility of the ideological soil that National Socialism was able to cultivate within the institution and in a city that was a Nazi stronghold. Images of a student parade in preparation for a book burning in the Königsplatz in May 1933 give chilling expression to a readiness for national revolution. It had taken ever deeper root among THM students since Hitler's Munich Putsch ten years earlier, when a THM student and a graduate had been among the sixteen Nazi dead. The political congruence between the student body and an overwhelmingly conservative professoriate has long raised challenges. The volume marking the THM's centenary in 1968 skated deftly over the Nazi years, barely mentioning Lutz Pistor, rector from 1938 to 1945, who worked tirelessly to promote alignment with the party and the war effort. It was not until the 125th anniversary, in 1993, that Ulrich Wengenroth finally addressed the THM's darker past in his contribution to a modestly produced volume published under his...

Robert Fox. Science without Frontiers: Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870–1940.

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Science Without Frontiers: Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870–1940, by Robert Fox

The title of Robert Fox’s brief and deftly written book is not only a statement of its object of inquiry—scientific internationalism before and after the First World War—but also a declaration of the author’s optimistic adherence to ‘the goal of knowledge open to all’ (p. 111). The latter element is only explicit in the introduction and epilogue, but substantially informs the analysis in between: a tone of celebration pervades the first chapter’s account of the leading manifestations of an explosion of standardisation and co-operation around the turn of the twentieth century; one of melancholy emerges as the second and third chapters detail the ‘fractured world’ of scientific endeavour that emerged after 1918. The book’s main contentions are clearly set out and pursued consistently throughout. Internationalism in the sciences peaked in the decades prior to 1914, motivated by a combination of concerns over the proliferation and increasing specialisation of knowledge and publications, and commitments to the free exchange and easy availability of information (pp. 11–44). The outbreak of war abruptly curtailed internationalist ideals and mechanisms, and the repeated insistence on national distinctiveness over the following four years coupled with the victors’ refusal to be conciliatory after the Armistice represented a ‘watershed’ in science every bit as much as in other arenas (pp. 45–73). When, from the mid-1920s, there was ‘a concerted move to reestablish normal relations within the world of science’ (p. 74), residual notions of national difference remained, and were exacerbated under totalitarian regimes and a wider shift towards state-sponsored science during the 1930s (pp. 74–106). Despite these changes, vestiges of internationalist ideals remained and informed ventures such as UNESCO after the Second World War, as well as more recent Internet-based efforts to promote universally accessible knowledge (pp. 107–11).

An Interview with Robert Fox

The following interview with Professor Fox was conducted by Gildo Magalhães at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Advanced Studies on November 16, 2017, with the participation of Raiany Oliveira, Flávio Magalhães, and Sara Albieri.

Science without Frontiers. Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870–1940, by Robert Fox

Science without Frontiers. Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870–1940, by Robert Fox

Edited by Chi-hung Clarence Ng, Robert Fox, and Michiko Nakano, Reforming Learning and Teaching in Asia-Pacific Universities: Influences of Globalised Processes in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia

Edited by Chi-hung Clarence Ng, Robert Fox, and Michiko Nakano, <i>Reforming Learning and Teaching in Asia-Pacific Universities: Influences of Globalised Processes in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia</i>

Éloge to Robert Fox

The 20th Alexandre Koyré Medal awarded since 1968 to prominent historians of science was awarded to Robert Fox, leading historian of European science of the period from the 18th to the beginnings of the 20th century. The Medal was presented to Robert Fox during the 7th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Prague, 23 September 2016, and the Éloge describes his career and work.

Historiography of science and technology in focus. A discussion with Professor Robert Fox

The article is an extended discussion with a laureate of numerous international distinctions, Professor Robert Fox, about his career, intellectual fascinations, as well as changing methods, styles, approaches and themes in the historiography of science and technology.

Paleoanthropological significance and morphological variability of the human bones and teeth from Tabon Cave

Tabon Cave is one of the few archaeological sites in island Southeast Asia which provided Upper Pleistocene Homo sapiens fossils. The published osteological material consists in one frontal bone and three mandibular fragments discovered during 1960 fieldworks as well as 11 new human remains unearthed during 2000–2001 excavations. However, recent efforts to recover and centralize the considerable amount of archaeological specimens and data from 1960s' excavations revealed that an unexpected huge number of human bone remains were excavated during this period. The collection, preserved in the National Museum of the Philippines, includes currently at least 483 human bone remains. We propose here a preliminary review of the anatomical representation of the human bones from this collection and a first large scale comparative morphometric analysis focusing on the crown dimensions of six permanent first upper molars (UM1). This first overview revealed an extreme fragmentation of the bones of the collection resulting in a poorly indicative MNI. From the bones bearing sufficient diagnostic morphology, few immature individuals are present in the assemblage. Refitting of specimens and observation of broken surfaces indicated that ancient human activity in the cave (anterior to the excavation) was likely to be an important taphonomic factor of fragmentation of the assemblage. Our comparative analysis, including 339 UM1, revealed that two UM1 from Tabon Cave have unusual large dimensions, outside the range of variation of submodern Southeast Asians (SEAn) molars of our sample. Four other UM1 from Tabon fall in – or close to – the variability of the Philippines Negritos. We show also that the morphological disparity encountered among the UM1 from Tabon Cave is higher than in other archaeological sites and submodern populations of our sample. This confirms previous publications that emphasized important morphological variations and proposed the hypothesis of the presence of two morphotypes. Although chrono-stratigraphic information is lacking because of the disturbed stratigraphic context in which almost the totality of the bones was unearthed, unpublished reports and field documents show that Robert Fox (head of the 1960s' excavations) considered that an important part of this collection might have a Pleistocene age. Given the scarcity of the Pleistocene Homo sapiens fossil record in island Southeast Asia (SEA), part of this collection might improve significantly our knowledge of the morphological relatedness and variability of the Upper Pleistocene Homo sapiens in the region.

Thomas Harriot and His World: Mathematics, Exploration, and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England

Contents: Preface Thomas Harriot Lectures 1990-2009 Introduction the many worlds of Thomas Harriot, Robert Fox Thomas Harriot and the great mathematical tradition, Jon V. Pepper Chymicorum in morem: refraction, matter theory, and secrecy in the Harriot-Kepler correspondence, Robert Goulding Reconstructing Thomas Harriot's treatise on equations, Jacqueline Stedall Harriot on combinations, Ian Maclean Thomas Harriot as an English Galileo: the force of shared knowledge in early modern mechanics, Matthias Schemmel Why Thomas Harriot was not the English Galilieo, John Henry Patronizing, publishing, and perishing: Harriot's lost opportunities and his lost work 'Arcticon', Stephen Pumfrey Last act? 1618 and the shaping of Sir Walter Ralegh's reputation, Mark Nicholls Thomas Harriot and the mariner's culture on board a transatlantic ship in 1585, Pascal Brioist Appendices: The 'perfect' Harriot/de Bry: cautionary notes on identifying an authentic copy of the deBry edition of Thomas Hariot's A Brief and True Report (1590), Larry E. Tise Harriot's Latin, Charles Fantazzi The portrait of Thomas Harriot, Diccon Swan A bibliography of secondary sources relating to the work and life of Thomas Harriot, published since 2000, Daniel Jon Mitchell Index.

Thomas Harriot and His World: Mathematics, Exploration, and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England. Robert Fox, ed. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. xviii + 256 pp. $124.95.

Thomas Harriot and His World: Mathematics, Exploration, and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England. Robert Fox, ed. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. xviii + 256 pp. $124.95. - Volume 68 Issue 1

Robert FOX, The Savant and the State. Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth Century France

Robert FOX, The Savant and the State. Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth Century France

The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France. By Robert Fox. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, volume 3.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Pp. x+394. $60.00.

<i>The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France</i>. By Robert Fox. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, volume 3.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Pp. x+394. $60.00.

Robert Fox. The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France.

Robert Fox. The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France.

The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France - Robert Fox

The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France - Robert Fox

The next 75 years

With this issue of Notes and Records of the Royal Society we come to the end of our 75th year of publication. Since our first issue in 1938, the world of periodical publishing in the history of science, technology and medicine has undergone profound changes. Many new journals have been founded,