In existographies, Robert Fox (1938-) (CR:2) is an English physics historian noted for a number of publications dealing with early theories of heat and the history of thermodynamics. [1]
Overview
In 1986, Fox published Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire: a Critical Edition with the Surviving Scientific Manuscripts, wherein he presented a French and English translation of Sadi Carnot's Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, with historical introduction, notes, commentary, along with unpublished manuscript notes of Carnot. [2] Some of this was done in collaboration with British physicist Eric Mendoza.
In 1997, Fox collaborated with Charles Gillispie, a noted noted Lazare Carnot biographer, on the book Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1749-1827: a Life in Exact Science, a book on the work of French physicist Pierre Laplace. [4]
Education
Fox, at the University of Oxford, completed his BA in in physics in 1961, his MA in 1965, and his PhD in 1967, under Alistair Crombie, with a thesis on “The Study of Thermal Properties of Gases in Relation to Physical Theory, from Montgolfier to Regnault”.
Fox was a faculty of on the Sciences of Administration of Laval University. He was a director of the Science Museum, London and a director of research at the Centre de Recherche en Historie des Sciences et des Techniques at the Cite des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris. He then taught at the University of Lancaster. In 1988, he became a professor of history of science at the University of Oxford; retiring from that position in 2006. [1] He has since been working on a social and cultural history of science and technology in France between 1814 and 1918, and on the history of physics in Oxford since 1850. [3]
References
1. Fox, Robert and Guagnini, Anna. (1993). Education, Technology, and Industrial Performance in Europe, 1850-1939 (Robert Fox, pg. x). Cambridge University Press.
2. Fox, Robert. (1986). Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire: a Critical Edition with the Surviving Scientific Manuscripts (Mendoza, 8+ pgs). Manchester University Press.
3. Robert Fox (faculty) – University of Oxford.
4. Gillisipie, Charles C. and Fox, Robert. (1998). Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1749-1827: a Life in Exact Science. Princeton University Press.
Further reading
● Fox, Robert. (1971). The Caloric Theory of Gases: from Lavoisier to Regnault. Clarendon Press..
● Fox, Robert. (1974). “The Rise and Fall of Laplacean Physics”, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 4:89-136.
External links
● Robert Fox (historian) – Wikipedia.
● Fox, Robert (1938-) – WorldCat Identities.
● Robert Fox (faculty) – University of Oxford.
