Félix Savart was a French surgeon and Physicist who studied acoustics, vibration, and elasticity. He was born in Mézières, France, in June 30, 1791. He was best known for his 1820 investigation with Jean-Baptiste Biot of the strength of the magnetic field as a function of the geometry of a wire and the current running through it, which resulted in Biot-Savart Law of electrodynamics. However, most of his research dealt with acoustics and the explanation of how the violin works.
Savart’s family had a history of being involved in the military or becoming engineers. His father was an engineer at the military school in Metz. At seventeen, Felix Savart decided to take a different route and spent two years studying medicine at the military hospital at Metz from 1808 to 1810. He became a regimental surgeon in Napoleon’s army. Savart was discharged from the army after Napoleon’s defeat in 1814. He returned to his medical training at the University of Strasbourg where he later received degree in medicine in 1816.
Felix Savart focused on getting more experience and translated De Medicina, a 1st-century BCE medical treatise written by a Roman encyclopedist, Aulus Cornelius Celsus. He practiced medicine in Metz, but later found that he spent more time in physics rather than treating his patients.
Studies and experiments
Felix Savart’s early interest was in physics. His brother who was studying at École Polytechnique began to work on the physics of vibration.
In 1817, Savart moved back to Metz and built a physics laboratory dedicated to the study of sound and built his first experimental violin using mathematical principles. In 1819, he went to Paris to find a publisher for his translated De Medicina and to speak to Biot about the acoustics of musical instruments. Savart even created and demonstrated a trapezoidal violin that provided sounds superior to the normal violin.
Biot was studying electricity when Savart arrived in Paris, and he found his experiment very interesting. Biot presented Savart’s Memoir on the Construction to the Académie des Sciences, and it was published in 1819.
Together, Jean-Baptiste Biot and Félix Savart discovered the Biot-Savart law, by which the magnetic fields produced by electric currents can be calculated, and published the paper “Note sur le magnetisme de la pile de Volta” in 1820.
Felix Savart teachings
Savart began teaching science in a private school in 1820. He taught at the College of France and was later elected to the Academy of Sciences as professor in general, and then in experimental physics specifically, in 1836. Savart held this position until his death. He also investigated the sound and hearing and devised the Savart disk, a rotating disk that produced a sound wave of known frequency to measure high-frequency limits. He used this technology to help study discordant and harmonious sounds.
Most of Savart’s 27 scientific papers were published in Annales de Chimie et de Physique journal. Felix Savart passed away in Paris, France on March 16, 1841, a few months short of his 50th birthday. Félix Savart was honored by having a street in Mézières named after him.
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