Léon Foucault Catholicism that he previously abandoned. Foucault died of what was probably a rapidly developing case of multiple sclerosis on 11 February 1868 in Paris and was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery. The asteroid 5668 Foucault was named for him. His is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. Collected Works: 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,
Foucault pendulum Spin of a relativistic particle moving in a circular orbit precesses similar to the swing plane of Foucault pendulum. The relativistic velocity space in Minkowski spacetime can be treated as a sphere "S" in 4-dimensional Euclidean space with imaginary radius and imaginary timelike coordinate. Parallel transport of polarization vectors along such sphere gives rise to Thomas precession, which is analogous to the rotation of the swing plane of Foucault pendulum due to parallel transport along a sphere "S" in 3-dimensional Euclidean space. In physics, the evolution of such systems is determined by geometric phases. Mathematically they are understood through parallel