Antoine Lilti, The Invention of Celebrity 1750–1850

Jules - Antoine Regnauld

Jules-Antoine Regnauld (1822-1895), French physician and pharmacist, who carried researches about mydriatic alkaloids (such as atropine), electrochemical phenomena, electromotive force, amalgams, properties of mixing in saline solutions, physiology, electrophysiology, fluorescence in live tissues, medical chemistry, anesthesia, and vision phenomena. Life and career Very little information is av...

Measuring Celebrity

Celebrity is not fame, but it too can be measured. A version of this paper, somewhat mangled by the editor, appears in Annals of Improbable Research 12, 1 (Jan/Feb 2006), 14–15. Fame is being known. Celebrity is being known by your first name. Monica Lewinsky became famous when people learned of her presidential activities. She became a celebrity when people called her Monica. Schulman [1, 2, 3...

Annual Report of Antoine LEMENANT

During the year 2009/2010 I was principally working on 3 different problems in collaboration with 4 different people, 3 of them working in Pisa and one in Parma. Those works led to 3 scientific papers and 1 review paper submitted during the year 2009/2010. The first work is a collaboration with Pablo Àlvarez-Caudevilla, postdoc at the center De Giorgi. We studied a problem in PDEs, about the as...

the invention of capitalism

The structure of invention

This paper explores the process by which radically novel technologies – ones such as radar, the turbojet, or the polymerase chain reaction – come into being. It shows that this process – “invention” – has a certain logical structure common to all cases. Invention is a process of linking some purpose or need with an effect that can be exploited to satisfy it. It may begin with a purpose or need ...