Léon Foucault Léon Foucault Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (; 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. 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
Foucault pendulum transport. There are numerous Foucault pendulums at universities, science museums, and the like throughout the world. The United Nations headquarters in New York City has one; the largest is at the Oregon Convention Center. The experiment has also been carried out at the South Pole, where it was assumed that the rotation of the earth would have maximum effect at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, in a six-story staircase of a new station under construction. The pendulum had a length of 33 m and the bob weighed 25 kg. The location was ideal: no moving air could disturb the pendulum,