Félix Savart

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Sound waves of the trapezoidal violin

Félix Savart / saˈvaːr / (born June 30, 1791 in Charleville-Mézières , Ardennes , † March 16, 1841 in Paris ) was a French doctor and physicist who, in the early 19th century, worked with Jean-Baptiste Biot on the connection between electricity and studied magnetism ( Biot-Savart law ).

Savart also investigated the properties of vibrating strings , so the unit of measurement Savart was named after him. He built a trapezoidal violin , but its sonic properties were not convincing (the original is in the Museum of the École polytechnique in Paris; an improved replica from 1909 is in the Deutsches Museum in Munich ).

The well-known French violin maker Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume worked closely with Félix Savart to improve the quality of his instruments. On wooden strips of 180 mm × 25 mm × 2.5 mm taken from the bottom of Stradivari and Guarneri violins, Savart strewed sand and ran a violin bow along the edge of the wooden strip. The note e always sounded, and two parallel lines formed in the sand. He undertook the same experiment with strips taken from the top and found that with these high-quality violins the tone produced with the top strip was a whole tone higher than that taken from the floor. In experiments with conventional violins, the difference was at least a third and could be more than a fourth .

In 1827 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences and in 1839 a foreign member of the Royal Society .

literature

Cape. 8.1: The work of Savart, in: Dieter Ullmann: Chladni and the development of acoustics from 1750-1860. Basel 1996. pp. 163-171. ISBN 3-7643-5398-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter S. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 25, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Savart, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French doctor and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Charleville-Mézières , Ardennes
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1841
Place of death Paris