Interior of Institut de France, Paris 6th 013

Félix Savart (; ; 30 June 1791, Mézières – 16 March 1841, Paris) was a French

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

who is primarily known for the

Biot–Savart law In physics, specifically electromagnetism, the Biot–Savart law ( or ) is an equation describing the magnetic field generated by a constant electric current. It relates the magnetic field to the magnitude, direction, length, and proximity of the ...

of electromagnetism, which he discovered together with his colleague

Jean-Baptiste Biot Jean-Baptiste Biot (; ; 21 April 1774 – 3 February 1862) was a French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who co-discovered the Biot–Savart law of magnetostatics with Félix Savart, established the reality of meteorites, made an early ba ...

. His main interest was in

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician ...

and the study of vibrating bodies. A particular interest in the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

led him to create an experimental

trapezoidal A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a convex quadrilateral in Eucli ...

model. He gave his name to the

savart The savart is a unit of measurement for musical pitch intervals (). One savart is equal to one thousandth of a decade ( 10/1: 3,986.313714 cents): 3.9863 cents. Musically, in just intonation, the interval of a decade is precisely a just major ...

, a unit of measurement for musical intervals, and to Savart's wheel—a device he used while investigating the range of

human hearing Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds through an organ, such as an ear, by detecting vibrations as periodic changes in the pressure of a surrounding medium. The academic field concerned with hearing is auditory ...

Biography

Savart was the son of Gérard Savart, an engineer at the military school of Metz. His brother, Nicolas, who was a student at the

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

and an officer in the engineering corps, did work on vibration. At the military hospital at Metz, Savart studied medicine and later went on to the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. The French university traces its history to the ea ...

, where he received his medical degree in 1816. Savart became a professor at

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment (''grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ne ...

in 1820 and was the co-originator of the

, along with

. Together, they worked on the theory of

magnetism Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particles ...

and

electrical current Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...

s. Their law was developed and published in 1820.A joint Biot-Savart paper "Note sur le magnétisme de la pile de Volta" was published in the ''Annales de chemie et de physique'' in 1820. The Biot–Savart law relates magnetic fields to the currents which are their sources. Savart also studied

. He developed the

Savart wheel The Savart wheel is an acoustical device named after the French physicist Félix Savart (1791–1841), which was originally conceived and developed by the English scientist Robert Hooke (1635–1703). A card held to the edge of a spinning tooth ...

which produces sound at specific graduated frequencies using rotating discs. Félix Savart is the namesake of a unit of measurement for musical intervals, the

, though it was actually invented by

Joseph Sauveur Joseph Sauveur (24 March 1653 – 9 July 1716) was a French mathematician and physicist. He was a professor of mathematics and in 1696 became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. Life Joseph Sauveur was born in La Flèche, the son of a ...

(

Stigler's law of eponymy Stigler's law of eponymy, proposed by University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen Stigler in his 1980 publication ''Stigler’s law of eponymy'', states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. Examples include ...

Works

References

External links

* *
Logarithmic Interval Measures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Savart, Felix French physicists 1791 births 1841 deaths Foreign Members of the Royal Society Members of the French Academy of Sciences Music psychologists People from Charleville-Mézières

Biography

Works

See also

References

External links