The year was 1973, and Jerome “Jerry” Cox and his family were en route from Hawaii to St. Louis on American Airlines Flight 152. In the early morning hours of January 12—Cox guessed around 3:00am, St. Louis time—the pilot called their attention to a staged missile launch visible from the plane. Based on their flight [Read more]
If you’ve ever accessed your electronic health records (EHR), there’s a good chance you’ve encountered MUMPS—the Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System, that is, not the vaccine-preventable disease. Originally designed in the late 1960s specifically for building medical databases, MUMPS and its descendants continue to form the basis of the EHR software used by many [Read more]
In April 2025, the Center for Health and Science Communication at Becker Library hosted a #SciComm Seminar titled “Communicating Effectively with Policymakers.” Ross C. Brownson, Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor of Public Health, presented a basic communication model and discussed its application to communicating evidence-based public health knowledge with local, state, and [Read more]
As the United States and the Soviet Union vied for global dominance during the Cold War, they also engaged in scientific and technical exchanges—including in the fields of health and medicine. These exchanges ranged from informal delegations to state-sponsored visits, and they often included scientists affiliated with universities and hospitals. Read more about how Washington [Read more]
Did you know the PC was invented at Washington University? Well, not that PC. The Programmed Console. In the spring of 1965, Jerome R. Cox Jr. and Wesley A. Clark co-taught a graduate course in computer design in which teams of students designed working computers. One student, V.W. “Bill” Gerth, also wrote an interactive radiation [Read more]
In 2015, the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Paderborn, Germany, opened an exhibition honoring women in computing. In addition to pioneers like Ada Lovelace, the museum recognized the contributions of Mary Allen Wilkes, whose work at MIT and Washington University was essential to the development of the Laboratory Instrument Computer (LINC) then on display at the [Read more]
In February 1974, Dr. Jerome Cox, Jr., gave a speech at his alma mater, MIT, which asked, “Why Don’t We Have a Medical-Industrial Complex”? While the use of technology in medicine had certainly progressed since the 1950s, he suggested “a gap exists between expectations and accomplishments,” noting “[t]hings haven’t moved as they have in the [Read more]