Léon Foucault pendulum suspended from the roof of the Panthéon, Paris. The experiment caused a sensation in both the learned and popular worlds, and ""Foucault pendulums"" were suspended in major cities across Europe and America and attracted crowds. In the following year he used (and named) the gyroscope as a conceptually simpler experimental proof. In 1855, he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for his 'very remarkable experimental researches'. Earlier in the same year he was made "physicien" (physicist) at the imperial observatory at Paris. In September 1855 he discovered that the force required for the rotation of a copper
The Passion of Michel Foucault "The Boston Globe", book critic George Scialabba described "The Passion of Michel Foucault" as an "intensely interesting" work which provides an "astoundingly vivid though non-prurient description of (mainly homosexual) sadomasochism". The historian of science Roger Smith writes that Miller turns Foucault's life "into a drama for our times". The Passion of Michel Foucault The Passion of Michel Foucault is a biography of the French philosopher Michel Foucault authored by the American philosopher James Miller. It was first published in the United States by Simon & Schuster in 1993. Within the book, Miller made the claim that Foucault's experiences in the