Jean-Bertrand-Léon Foucault

From Citizendium
Revision as of 03:31, 8 June 2009 by imported>Caesar Schinas (Fix TOC)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Foucault (1819-1868), (alternatively referred to as Jean or Léon) was a colleague of Armand Fizeau, and utilised Fizeau's work and apparatus to further refine calculations of the speed of light to within 1% of modern estimations. Foucault had also shown, just prior to the work of Fizeau, that light travels slower through water than air, in contradiction of the corpuscular theory of light popular at the time. [1]

[edit intro]


References

  1. Gribbin, John (2002). Science: A History. Penguin Books