How Did Foucault Contribute To Science

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Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish astronomer and monk, first proposed the idea that the earth rotated around the sun rather than vice versa and that the earth rotated along its axis. Though this is one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, many people, especially in the Catholic Church, did not believe him. This is because it denied the earth’s central position in the universe. His discoveries did not have any experimental proof until several centuries later where a French scientist named Jean Bernard Leon Foucault held the first public demonstrations using a pendulum which gave astonishing evidence that everyday people could see of the earth’s rotation.

Jean Bernard Leon Foucault was born in 1819 in Paris. Though he originally thought he would study medicine and become a doctor, he realized that he hated working with blood so he instead focused on other branches of science. Because in the mid 19th century scientists did not usually specialize in just one narrow speciality, Foucault studied many different branches of science. He made discoveries in electricity, magnetism, chemistry, optics, and astronomy. But it was only until he developed his experiment with a pendulum that he was able to achieve worldwide success and renown. …show more content…
But when he, by complete chance, discovered that pendulums had a curious property of swinging in the same direction if the point from where its suspended is rotated by an external force. He deduced that if a pendulum changed direction of a swing, this could only happen because of the rotation of the earth under the pendulum. Because of this, the rotation or progression of the swinging pendulum that we observe is actually an illusion, because in reality it is the earth that is rotating and not the
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