Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher and university professor. He is known for his 1980 novel Il nome della rosa, a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies, literary theory, he wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault and L'isola del giorno prima. His novel Il cimitero di Praga, released in 2010, topped the bestseller charts in Italy. Eco wrote academic texts, children's books, essays, he was the founder of the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Republic of San Marino, president of the Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities at the University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei, an honorary fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford. Eco was honoured with the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement in 2005 along with Roger Angell. Eco was born in the city of Alessandria, in Piedmont in northern Italy, here he attended high school, his father, one of thirteen children, was an accountant before the government called him to serve in three wars.
During World War II, Umberto and his mother, moved to a small village in the Piedmontese mountainside. Eco received a Salesian education and made references to the order and its founder in his works and interviews, his family name is an acronym of ex caelis oblatus, given to his grandfather by a city official. Umberto's father urged him to become a lawyer, but he entered the University of Turin to take up medieval philosophy and literature, writing his thesis on Thomas Aquinas and earning a Laurea degree in philosophy in 1954. During his university studies, Eco left the Catholic Church. After that, Eco worked as a cultural editor for the state broadcasting station Radiotelevisione Italiana and lectured at the University of Turin. A group of avant-garde artists, painters and writers, whom he had befriended at RAI, became an important and influential component in Eco's writing career; this was true after the publication of his first book in 1956, Il problema estetico in San Tommaso, an extension of his Laurea thesis.
This marked the beginning of his lecturing career at his alma mater. In September 1962 he married Renate Ramge, a German art teacher with whom he had a son and a daughter, he divided his time between a vacation house near Urbino. He had a 20,000 volume library in the latter, he was a visiting professor at Columbia University several times in the 1990s. In 1992–1993 Eco was the Norton professor at Harvard University. On 8 May 1993, Eco received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Indiana University Bloomington in recognition of his over fifteen-year association with the university's Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies. Six books that were authored, co-authored, or co-edited by Eco were published by Indiana University Press. In 1996, he was appointed Honorary Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Tartu, he collaborated with his friend Thomas Sebeok and Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Indiana University. He became Satrap of the Collège de'Pataphysique in 2001. On 23 May 2002, Eco received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
In 2009, the University of Belgrade in Serbia awarded him an honorary doctorate. Eco was a member of the Italian skeptic organization Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delle Affermazioni sulle Pseudoscienze CICAP. Eco died at his Milanese home of pancreatic cancer, from which he had been suffering for two years, on the night of 19 February 2016. At the time of his death at the age of 84, he was a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna, a position that he had held since 2008. In 1959 Eco published his second book, Sviluppo dell'estetica medievale, on medieval philosophy. After 18 months' military service in the Italian Army, he left RAI in 1959 to become the senior non-fiction editor of the Bompiani publishing house in Milan, a position he occupied until 1975. Eco began developing his ideas on the "open" text and on semiotics, writing many essays on these subjects, in 1962 he published Opera aperta. In it, Eco argued. Literature which limits one's potential understanding to a single, unequivocal line, the closed text, remains the least rewarding, while texts that are the most active between mind and life are the liveliest and best—although valuation terminology was not his primary focus.
Eco came to these positions through study of language and from semiotics, rather than from psychology or historical analysis. Eco's short 1961 essay "Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno" received much notoriety among the general public and has drawn endless questions by journalists at every public appearance by Eco, his book Apocalittici e integrati analyzes the phenomenon of mass communication from a sociolo
Jacques-Alain Miller
Jacques-Alain Miller is a psychoanalyst and writer. He is one of the founder members of the École de la Cause freudienne and the World Association of Psychoanalysis which he presided from 1992 to 2002, he is the sole editor of the books of The Seminars of Jacques Lacan. Miller's career began early. At the time he was in khâgne at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and studying Latin in private classes with Jean-Louis Laugier who gave him "the desire to be a Normalien". In 1962, he entered the École Normale Supérieure. There he befriended fellow students who would go on to leave a lasting mark on intellectual life in France: Étienne Balibar, Pierre Macherey, François Regnault, Robert Linart and Jean-Claude Milner. At the ENS he attended the seminars of Roland Barthes, the "first writer with whom I had a close friendship". At this time he met the young Derrida, lecturing at the Sorbonne. In 1963, Althusser assigned Miller the task of reading "all of Lacan" and Miller carried out the task admiringly; the following year, Jacques Lacan was appointed lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes and transferred his Seminar to the ENS. Miller's encounter with Lacan was to be a decisive one: he contributed to the Seminar first with questions with full texts over the following years.
Over the summer break of 1964, Lacan invited Miller to his country house, La Prévôté in Guitrancourt, where Miller read the transcriptions of Lacan's early seminars. During a stay at Guitrancourt, Miller began a relationship with Judith Lacan, Lacan's daughter, whom he married in 1966; the index of concepts and the commentary on the graphs in Lacan's 1966 Écrits were drawn up by Miller, in that same year, he founded Cahiers pour l'Analyse, a seminal publication whose editorial board included Alain Grosrichard, Regnault and Alain Badiou. Miller's written texts from this early period are published in the Gallimard collection, Un début dans la vie which includes his interview with Sartre and the influential text presented at Lacan's Seminar, "Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier". After a period of active involvement in the leftwing movements associated with May 1968, Miller was encouraged by Lacan to take "another path by which to get your privileged revolt across: mine for example".
In time Miller would become instrumental in Lacan's École Freudienne de Paris and editing the journal Ornicar? which published lessons of Lacan's Seminar. When Lacan moved to the University of Vincennes—the Department of Psychoanalysis was renamed "Le Champ freudien"—Lacan became its director, Michel Foucault appointed Jacques-Alain Miller president. Miller's teaching from this period took on the name L'Orientation lacanienne and gave rise to published texts on Bentham and Church. In 1973, Miller transcribed at Lacan's behest the 1964 Seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, to lead to a lifelong commitment to establishing the full series of Lacan's annual Parisian Seminar. Book XI was published by Seuil in 1973, with Books I & Book XX following in 1975 and Book II in 1978. Miller contributed in 1973 to the two-part televised programme that became known as "Television", leading Lacan to credit Miller by saying "He who interrogates me / knows how to read me". Lacan's dissolution of the EFP in 1980 was followed by the creation of La cause freudienne.
Soon thereafter Lacan died. Miller resumed his weekly seminars in 1980, thus opening the series known as L'Orientation lacanienne II. Dedicated to expounding and elucidating Lacan's work, Miller's course was attended by many influential figures in psychoanalytic theory, notably Éric Laurent and Slavoj Zizek; the Lacanian Orientation course went under the banner of a "return to the clinic" and early themes included "From the Symptom to the Fantasy", "The Differential Clinic of Psychoses", "Traits of Perversion". The nineteen eighties were a period of extensive travel in Europe and Latin America to consolidate the emerging communities of Lacan's students and adherents, culminating in the founding of the European School of Psychoanalysis in 1990 and the Argentine Escuela de la Orientación Lacaniana in 1992. Over this decade, Miller established Book Book VII of Lacan's Seminar. Miller's 1980s lectures. In the early nineties, Miller's work began to be translated into English and published in the United States through the Newsletter of the Freudian Field and the New York-based cultural journal Lacanian Ink under the editorship of Josefina Ayerza.
In 1992, Miller launched the World Association of Psychoanalysis which grouped together the École de la Cause freudienne, the European School of Psychoanalysis, the Escuela de la Orientación Lacaniana, soon thereafter oversaw the creation of Schools in Brazil and Italy which were included in the WAP. The end of the decade saw a "thaw" in relations with the IPA thanks to the efforts of its President Horacio Etchegoyen. Miller was invited to attend the 1997 IPA Congress in Barcelona where his remarks from the floor were greeted with warm applause. In 1995, Miller's weekly course moved to the Paul-Painlevé Amphitheatre at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, where it would continue until his retirement from University Paris-VIII in 2009. In 1998, his teaching entered its third phase as L'Orientation lacanienne III; the Buenos Aires lectures of the 1989-1996
Paris
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, commerce, fashion and the arts; the City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €681 billion in 2016, accounting for 31 percent of the GDP of France, was the 5th largest region by GDP in the world. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong-Kong, in 2018; the city is a major rail and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly.
Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily, is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris is known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was the most visited art museum in the world in 2018, with 10.2 million visitors. The Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe; the historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site. Popular landmarks in the centre of the city include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, both on the Île de la Cité. Paris received 23 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel stays, with the largest numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the UK, Germany and China.
It was ranked as the third most visited travel destination in the world in 2017, after Bangkok and London. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris; the 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympics; the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the 1960, 1984, 2016 UEFA European Championships were held in the city and, every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes there. The name "Paris" is derived from the Celtic Parisii tribe; the city's name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. Paris is referred to as the City of Light, both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments.
Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit. By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps. Since the late 19th century, Paris has been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in French as Parisiens, they are pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; the Parisii minted their own coins for that purpose. The Romans began their settlement on Paris' Left Bank; the Roman town was called Lutetia. It became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city.
Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île-de-la-Citie failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris' strategic importance—with its bridges prevent
Institut de France
The Institut de France is a French learned society, grouping five académies, including the Académie française. The Institute, located in Paris, manages 1,000 foundations, as well as museums and châteaux open for visit, it awards prizes and subsidies, which amounted to a total of over €27 million per year in 2017. Most of these prizes are awarded by the Institute on the recommendation of the académies; the building was constructed as the Collège des Quatre-Nations by Cardinal Mazarin, as a school for students from new provinces attached to France under Louis XIV. The Institut de France was established on 25 October 1795, by the French government. In 2017, Xavier Darcos was named the Institut de France's chancellor. Académie française – initiated 1635, suppressed 1793, restored 1803 as a division of the institute. Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres – initiated 1663. Académie des sciences – initiated 1666. Académie des beaux-arts – created 1816 as the merger of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture Académie de musique and Académie d'architecture Académie des sciences morales et politiques – initiated 1795, suppressed 1803, reestablished 1832.
The Royal Society of Canada, initiated 1882, was modeled after the Institut de France and the Royal Society of London. The Lebanese Academy of Sciences, known by its French name "Académie des Sciences du Liban", is broadly fashioned after the French Academy of Sciences, with which it continues to develop joint programs. Collège des Quatre-Nations National academy List of museums in Paris List of honorary societies Media related to Institut de France at Wikimedia Commons Official website Notes on the Institut de France from the Scholarly Societies project
Foucault pendulum
The Foucault pendulum or Foucault's pendulum is a simple device named after French physicist Léon Foucault and conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. The pendulum was introduced in 1851 and was the first experiment to give simple, direct evidence of the earth's rotation. Today, Foucault pendulums are popular displays in science universities; the first public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum took place in February 1851 in the Meridian of the Paris Observatory. A few weeks Foucault made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 28-kg brass-coated lead bob with a 67-m-long wire from the dome of the Panthéon, Paris; the plane of the pendulum's swing rotated clockwise 11.3° per hour, making a full circle in 31.8 hours. The original bob used in 1851 at the Panthéon was moved in 1855 to the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. A second temporary installation was made for the 50th anniversary in 1902. During museum reconstruction in the 1990s, the original pendulum was temporarily displayed at the Panthéon, but was returned to the Musée des Arts et Métiers before it reopened in 2000.
On April 6, 2010, the cable suspending the bob in the Musée des Arts et Métiers snapped, causing irreparable damage to the pendulum and to the marble flooring of the museum. An exact copy of the original pendulum has been operating under the dome of the Panthéon, Paris since 1995. At either the North Pole or South Pole, the plane of oscillation of a pendulum remains fixed relative to the distant masses of the universe while Earth rotates underneath it, taking one sidereal day to complete a rotation. So, relative to Earth, the plane of oscillation of a pendulum at the North Pole – viewed from above – undergoes a full clockwise rotation during one day; when a Foucault pendulum is suspended at the equator, the plane of oscillation remains fixed relative to Earth. At other latitudes, the plane of oscillation precesses relative to Earth, but more than at the pole. For example, a Foucault pendulum at 30° south latitude, viewed from above by an earthbound observer, rotates counterclockwise 360° in two days.
To demonstrate rotation directly rather than indirectly via the swinging pendulum, Foucault used a gyroscope in an 1852 experiment. The inner gimbal of the Foucault gyroscope was balanced on knife edge bearings on the outer gimbal and the outer gimbal was suspended by a fine, torsion-free thread in such a manner that the lower pivot point carried no weight; the gyro was spun to 9000–12000 revolutions per minute with an arrangement of gears before being placed into position, sufficient time to balance the gyroscope and carry out 10 minutes of experimentation. The instrument could be observed either with a microscope viewing a tenth of a degree scale or by a long pointer. At least three more copies of a Foucault gyro were made in convenient travelling and demonstration boxes and copies survive in the UK, the US. A Foucault pendulum requires care to set up because imprecise construction can cause additional veering which masks the terrestrial effect; the initial launch of the pendulum is critical.
Air resistance damps the oscillation, so some Foucault pendulums in museums incorporate an electromagnetic or other drive to keep the bob swinging. A'pendulum day' is the time needed for the plane of a suspended Foucault pendulum to complete an apparent rotation about the local vertical; this is one sidereal day divided by the sine of the latitude. In a near-inertial frame moving in tandem with Earth, but not sharing the rotation of the earth about its own axis, the suspension point of the pendulum traces out a circular path during one sidereal day. At the latitude of Paris, 48 degrees 51 minutes north, a full precession cycle takes just under 32 hours, so after one sidereal day, when the Earth is back in the same orientation as one sidereal day before, the oscillation plane has turned by just over 270 degrees. If the plane of swing was north-south at the outset, it is east-west one sidereal day later; this implies that there has been exchange of momentum. The Earth is so much more massive than the pendulum bob that the Earth's change of momentum is unnoticeable.
Nonetheless, since the pendulum bob's plane of swing has shifted, the conservation laws imply that an exchange must have occurred. Rather than tracking the change of momentum, the precession of the oscillation plane can efficiently be described as a case of parallel transport. For that, it can be demonstrated, by composing the infinitesimal rotations, that the precession rate is proportional to the projection of the angular velocity of Earth onto the normal direction to Earth, which implies that the trace of the plane of oscillation will undergo parallel transport. After 24 hours, the difference between initial and final orientations of the trace in the Earth frame is α = −2πsin, which corresponds to the value given by the Gauss–Bonnet theorem. Α is called the holonomy or geometric phase of the pendulum. When analyzing earthbound motions, the Earth frame is not an inertial frame, but rotat
Engineering
Engineering is the application of knowledge in the form of science and empirical evidence, to the innovation, construction and maintenance of structures, materials, devices, systems and organizations. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, types of application. See glossary of engineering; the term engineering is derived from the Latin ingenium, meaning "cleverness" and ingeniare, meaning "to contrive, devise". The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development has defined "engineering" as: The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination. Engineering has existed since ancient times, when humans devised inventions such as the wedge, lever and pulley; the term engineering is derived from the word engineer, which itself dates back to 1390 when an engine'er referred to "a constructor of military engines."
In this context, now obsolete, an "engine" referred to a military machine, i.e. a mechanical contraption used in war. Notable examples of the obsolete usage which have survived to the present day are military engineering corps, e.g. the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers; the word "engine" itself is of older origin deriving from the Latin ingenium, meaning "innate quality mental power, hence a clever invention."Later, as the design of civilian structures, such as bridges and buildings, matured as a technical discipline, the term civil engineering entered the lexicon as a way to distinguish between those specializing in the construction of such non-military projects and those involved in the discipline of military engineering. The pyramids in Egypt, the Acropolis and the Parthenon in Greece, the Roman aqueducts, Via Appia and the Colosseum, Teotihuacán, the Brihadeeswarar Temple of Thanjavur, among many others, stand as a testament to the ingenuity and skill of ancient civil and military engineers.
Other monuments, no longer standing, such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pharos of Alexandria were important engineering achievements of their time and were considered among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The earliest civil engineer known by name is Imhotep; as one of the officials of the Pharaoh, Djosèr, he designed and supervised the construction of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara in Egypt around 2630–2611 BC. Ancient Greece developed machines in both military domains; the Antikythera mechanism, the first known mechanical computer, the mechanical inventions of Archimedes are examples of early mechanical engineering. Some of Archimedes' inventions as well as the Antikythera mechanism required sophisticated knowledge of differential gearing or epicyclic gearing, two key principles in machine theory that helped design the gear trains of the Industrial Revolution, are still used today in diverse fields such as robotics and automotive engineering. Ancient Chinese, Greek and Hungarian armies employed military machines and inventions such as artillery, developed by the Greeks around the 4th century BC, the trireme, the ballista and the catapult.
In the Middle Ages, the trebuchet was developed. Before the development of modern engineering, mathematics was used by artisans and craftsmen, such as millwrights, clock makers, instrument makers and surveyors. Aside from these professions, universities were not believed to have had much practical significance to technology. A standard reference for the state of mechanical arts during the Renaissance is given in the mining engineering treatise De re metallica, which contains sections on geology and chemistry. De re metallica was the standard chemistry reference for the next 180 years; the science of classical mechanics, sometimes called Newtonian mechanics, formed the scientific basis of much of modern engineering. With the rise of engineering as a profession in the 18th century, the term became more narrowly applied to fields in which mathematics and science were applied to these ends. In addition to military and civil engineering, the fields known as the mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering.
Canal building was an important engineering work during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution. John Smeaton was the first self-proclaimed civil engineer and is regarded as the "father" of civil engineering, he was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals and lighthouses. He was a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Using a model water wheel, Smeaton conducted experiments for seven years, determining ways to increase efficiency. Smeaton introduced iron gears to water wheels. Smeaton made mechanical improvements to the Newcomen steam engine. Smeaton designed the third Eddystone Lighthouse where he pioneered the use of'hydraulic lime' and developed a technique involving dovetailed blocks of granite in the building of the lighthouse, he is important in the history, rediscovery of, development of modern cement, because he identified the compositional requirements needed to obtain "hydraulicity" in lime.
Panthéon
The Panthéon is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. It was built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens, it is an early example of neo-classicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's Tempietto. Located in the 5th arrondissement on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris. Designer Jacques-Germain Soufflot had the intention of combining the lightness and brightness of the Gothic cathedral with classical principles, but its role as a mausoleum required the great Gothic windows to be blocked. King Louis XV vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from his illness he would replace the ruined church of the Abbey of St Genevieve with an edifice worthy of the patron saint of Paris, he did recover, entrusted Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Marigny with the fulfillment of his vow.
In 1755, Marigny commissioned Jacques-Germain Soufflot to design the church, with construction beginning two years later. The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns, its ambitious lines called for a vast building 110 metres long by 84 meters wide, 83 metres high. No less vast was its crypt. Soufflot's masterstroke is concealed from casual view: the triple dome, each shell fitted within the others, permits a view through the oculus of the coffered inner dome of the second dome, frescoed by Antoine Gros with The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve; the outermost dome is built of stone bound together with iron cramps and covered with lead sheathing, rather than of carpentry construction, as was the common French practice of the period. Concealed flying buttresses pass the massive weight of the triple construction outwards to the portico columns; the foundations were laid in 1758. In 1780, Soufflot was replaced by his student, Jean-Baptiste Rondelet; the re-modelled Abbey of St. Genevieve was completed in 1790, coinciding with the early stages of the French Revolution.
Upon the death of the popular French orator and statesman Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau on 2 April 1791, the National Constituent Assembly, whose president had been Mirabeau, ordered that the building be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen, retaining Quatremère de Quincy to oversee the project. Mirabeau was the first person interred there, on 4 April 1791. Jean Guillaume Moitte created a pediment sculptural group The Fatherland crowning the heroic and civic virtues, replaced upon the Bourbon Restoration with one by David d'Angers. Twice since it has reverted to being a church, only to become again a meeting house dedicated to the great intellectuals of France; the cross of the dome, retained in compromise, is again visible during the current major restoration project. In 1851, physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the Earth by constructing a 67-metre Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome; the original sphere from the pendulum was temporarily displayed at the Panthéon in the 1990s during renovations at the Musée des Arts et Métiers.
The original pendulum was returned to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, a copy is now displayed at the Panthéon. It has been listed since 1920 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. From 1906 to 1922 the Panthéon was the site of Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture The Thinker. In 2006, Ernesto Neto, a Brazilian artist, installed "Léviathan Thot", an anthropomorphic installation inspired by the biblical monster; the art installation was in the Panthéon from 15 September 2006 until 31 October for Paris's Autumn Festival. In late 2006, a "cultural guerilla movement" calling itself The Untergunther completed a year-long project by which they covertly repaired the Panthéon's antique clockworks; the Government tried to sue the group for the intervention. The administration stopped the clock from working by removing one of its parts. By burying its great people in the Panthéon, the nation acknowledges the honour it received from them; as such, interment here is restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for "National Heroes".
Similar high honours exist in Les Invalides for historical military leaders such as Napoléon, Turenne and Vauban. Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Louis Braille, Jean Jaurès and Soufflot, its architect. In 1907 Marcellin Berthelot was buried with his wife Mme Sophie Berthelot. Marie Curie was interred in 1995, the first woman interred on merit. Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion, heroines of the French resistance, were interred in 2015. Simone Veil was interred in 2018, her husband Antoine Veil was interred alongside her so not to be separated; the repeated story that the remains of Voltaire were stolen by religious fanatics in 1814 and thrown into a garbage heap is false. Such rumours resulted in the coffin being opened in 1897, which confirmed that his remains were still present. On 30 November 2002, in an elaborate but solemn procession, six Republican Guards carried the coffin of Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers and other famous novels, to the Panthéon.
Draped in a blue-velvet cloth inscribed with the Musketeers' motto: "Un pour tous, tous pour un" the remains had been transported from their original interment site in the Cimetière de Villers-Cotterêts in
