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Léon Foucault (1819-1868) was a French physicist who demonstrated the Earth's rotation with a pendulum, measured the speed of light, discovered eddy currents, and invented the gyroscope. He also made contributions to photography, optics, and telescope mirrors.
Learn about Léon Foucault, who proved Earth's rotation with a pendulum, measured the speed of light, and invented a telescope mirror. Find out his biography, awards, and discoveries from Britannica.
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Léon Foucault was born to a middle-class family in Paris on September 18, 1819. His father, a well-known publisher, died when his son was only nine years old. Foucault grew up in Paris with his mother. He was frail and often sick, and as a result he was educated at home until he entered medical school. He decided early on that he couldn't handle th...
Foucault developed experiments to measure the speed of light. Astronomers use the speed of light to determine the distances between objects in the universe. In 1850, Foucault used an instrument developed in partnership with Fizeau—now known as the Fizeau-Foucault apparatus —to prove that the once-popular "corpuscular theory" of light was not correc...
Foucault continued to carry out his experiments throughout the 1860s, but his health deteriorated. He developed muscular weakness and had difficulty breathing and moving, all signs of what could have been the degenerative disease multiple sclerosis. He was also reported to have suffered a stroke the year before his death. There have been some sugge...
“Jean Bernard Léon Foucault.” Clavius Biography, www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Foucault.html.“Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Timeline - Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault.” Molecular Expressions Cell Biology: Bacteria Cell Structure, micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/fo...This Month in Physics History. www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200702/history.cfm.Learn about the life and achievements of Léon Foucault, a French scientist who developed the Foucault pendulum and improved the speed of light measurements. Find out how he contributed to astrophysics and faced health challenges in his later years.
- Carolyn Collins Petersen
Sep 18, 2011 · Léon Foucault was a French mathematician and astronomer who invented a pendulum to demonstrate the rotation of the earth. He also made important discoveries in photography, microscopy, and the speed of light.
Learn about the life and achievements of Leon Foucault, a French physicist who invented the Foucault pendulum, measured the speed of light, discovered eddy currents and more. Find out how he contributed to science, photography, astronomy and the Eiffel tower.
May 17, 2018 · The French physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819-1868) is remembered for the Foucault pendulum, by which he demonstrated the diurnal rotation of the earth, and for the first accurate determination of the velocity of light.
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Not until Léon Foucault’s famous pendulum demonstration in 1851 was there clear dynamical proof of Earth’s rotation. Jean Bernard Léon Foucault was born in Paris in September 1819, the son of a publisher.
