The knife, pendulum, gyroscope and the speed of light: what is the legacy Foucault left science
198 years ago, was born a famous French physicist.
As the fear of blood influenced the career choice of the famous scientist, who by photographing the Sun went on to measure the speed of light and where does the novel by Umberto Eco, see the section “History of science”.
Imagine that you are on Venus. Here is always cloudy and no sunlight. How do you accurately determine the length of the day? This is one task that gave his students a Nobel laureate, a gifted experimenter, Peter Kapitsa. In order to solve it, you need to use a human invention, who was born exactly 198 years ago in the family of a Parisian publisher.
Jean Bernard Leon Foucault received a good education at home and was supposed to be a medic. And even got a proper education, but became interested in physics.
However, the main reason that we don’t know the famous physician Jean Foucault, was the blood thing.
This fear of the young man could not overcome, and went into science, where he showed himself a distinguished experimenter.
The first major thing that was memorable Foucault — the improvement of the photographic process developed by Louis Daguerre. Then for three years he devoted himself to microanatomy, helping to prepare the famous course of lectures by Alfred Francois Donna, one of the founders of the micrograph. In 1845 Francois Arago convinced Jean Foucault and his friend, Hippolyte Fizeau, who in the years 1843-1845 became famous for his daguerreotypes of the Sun, to try to measure the speed of light.
Hippolyte Fizeau was the same age as Foucault — he was under five days and lived a very successful scientific life. Suffice it to say that his name has become one of the 72 names are written on the base of the Eiffel tower. As well as the name of his friend, Jean Foucault.