Léon Foucault
| Léon Foucault | |
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Léon Foucault (1819–1868)
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| Born | 18 September 1819 Paris, Kingdom of France |
| Died | 11 February 1868 (aged 48) Paris, Second French Empire |
| Residence | France |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | Paris Observatory |
| Alma mater | University of Paris |
| Known for | Foucault pendulum, eddy currents |
| Notable awards | Copley Medal (1855) |
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ bɛʁnaʁ leɔ̃ fuko]) (18 September 1819 – 11 February 1868) was a French physicist best known for his demonstration of the Foucault pendulum, a device demonstrating the effect of the Earth's rotation. He also made an early measurement of the speed of light, discovered eddy currents, and is credited with naming the gyroscope
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Foucault was the son of a publisher in Paris, where he was born on 18 September 1819. After an education received chiefly at home, he studied medicine, which he abandoned in favour of physics due to a blood phobia. He first directed his attention to the improvement of Louis Daguerre's photographic processes. For three years he was experimental assistant to Alfred Donné (1801–1878) in his course of lectures on microscopic anatomy.
With Hippolyte Fizeau he carried out a series of investigations on the intensity of the light of the sun, as compared with that of carbon in the arc lamp, and of lime in the flame of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe; on the interference of infrared radiation, and of light rays differing greatly in lengths of path; and on the chromatic polarization of light.
In 1850, he did an experiment using the Fizeau–Foucault apparatus to measure the speed of light; it came to be known as the Foucault–Fizeau experiment, and was viewed as "driving the last nail in the coffin" of Newton's corpuscular theory of light when it showed that light travels more slowly through water than through air.
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