Robert Simpson – författare

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Special Publications Series. Hurricane research implicates something more than science. It is the key to saving lives and mitigating economic damage. From the Galveston catastrophe of 1900, where more than 8,000 people died, to the economic devastation wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in the United States, scientists have striven to understand and track hurricanes while charting their societal effects. Hurricane! Coping with Disaster tells the dramatic history of that effort by leading meteorologists—the men and women who brought hurricane science into the 21st century, and those who sustain it today. for readers everywhere interested in climatology, hurricane research, the historical background, and more.

Dr Robert Simpson, one of Britain's finest composers and for nearly thirty years a BBC music producer, scrutinises the methods by which the BBC plans the annual Promenade Concerts. Basing his argument on long experience inside theBBC, Dr Simpson argues the only logical way to give the Proms the flair that a single imagination can provide - without those otherwise inevitable long-term imbalances - is to limit the tenure of the Controller to four or five years. Dr Simpson further examines the artistic gains and financial savings to be made from more extensive use of the BBC's own orchestra. He suggests that not only would this measure produce a saving of a staggering 62% of costs; it would also give the Controller almost total control of the repertoire. This would enable the Proms to become more adventurous than ever before, and a true realisation of Sir Henry Wood's original vision.A musician andwriter of scholarly books on Nielsen, Bruckner and Beethoven, for 30 years ROBERT SIMPSON was also a Music Producer with the BBC.

In Research as Development, Salla Sariola and Bob Simpson show how international collaboration operates in a setting that is typically portrayed as "resource-poor" and "scientifically lagging." Based on their long-term fieldwork in Sri Lanka, Sariola and Simpson bring into clear ethnographic focus the ways international scientific collaborations feature prominently in the pursuit of global health in which research operates "as" development and not merely "for" it. The authors follow the design, inception, and practice of two clinical trials: one a global health charity funded trial and the other a pharmaceutical industry-sponsored trial. Research as Development situates these two trials within their historical, political and cultural contexts and thus counters the idea that local actors are merely passive recipients of new technical and scientific rationalities. While social studies of clinical trials are beginning to be an established niche in academic writing, Research as Development helps fill important gaps in the literature through its examination of clinical research situated in cultures in low-income settings. Research as Development is noteworthy for the way it highlights the critical and creative role that local researchers play in establishing international collaborations and making them work into locally viable forms. The volume shows how these clinical and research interactions bring about changes in culture, technologies and expertise in Sri Lanka, contexts that have not previously been written about in any detail.