High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Fox was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas. He attended Kansas State University, where he earned a B.S. in mathematics in 1897. The next year he enlisted in the U.S. Army and fought in the Philippines with the 20th Kansas during the Spanish American War. When he was mustered out in 1899, Fox had achieved a rank of second lieutenant but he was disabled and was expected to die within a year. He recuperated completely, however, thanks to nursing by his mother. While recovering, Fox earned a master's degree at Kansas State and taught math at St. John's Military School in Salina, Kansas. Invited to Dartmouth College in 1901 by his cousin Ernest Fox Nichols, Fox soon departed for that school, where he earned a second B.S., this time in physics. While at Dartmouth, Edwin Brant Frost persuaded Fox to pursue a career in astronomy, and in 1903 Fox became a Carnegie Research Assistant at Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago. His primary interest at the observatory was in solar research.