Person: Savart, Félix
Félix Savart was a French mathematician who worked on electricity and enunciated the Biot-Savart law.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Gérard Savart moved to Metz where he was in charge of draftsmen at the engineering school.
- Savart spent around two years from 1808 to 1810 studying at a hospital in Metz.
- It was at this time, after training in the Metz hospital, that Savart became a regimental surgeon in Napoleon's army.
- In 1814 Savart was discharged from the army and resumed his medical training.
- It was to Strasbourg that Savart went in 1814 and, two years later, he graduated from the university with a medical degree.
- During his medical studies Savart became interested in Aulus Cornelius Celsus (first century AD), one of the greatest Roman medical writers, author of De medicina Ⓣ(On medicine).
- After completing his degree Savart remained in Strasbourg where he both gained further medical experience and also worked on a translation of Celsus's De medicina Ⓣ(On medicine).
- After returning to Metz in 1817 where he set up a medical practice, Savart spent more time studying physics than treating patients.
- With Savart showing little interest in his medical practice, and patients showing little interest in joining, he decided to go to Paris in 1819 and seek a publisher for his translation of Celsus's De medicina Ⓣ(On medicine).
- He had another reason to go to Paris, and that was to see Biot so that he could discuss with him the acoustics of musical instruments that was by now fascinating Savart.
- As it happened, at the time that Savart reached Paris Biot was lecturing on acoustics at the Faculty of Science.
- He found Savart's work on the acoustics of bowed string instruments very interesting and he presented a memoir that Savart had written Mémoire des instruments à chordes et à archet Ⓣ(Memoir on stringed instuments with a bow) to the Academy of Sciences; it was published in 1819.
- This memoir contained a design of a trapezoid violin which Savart claimed to have superior acoustic performance to the traditional violin.
- When Savart arrived in Paris, Biot was undertaking research on electricity in addition to lecturing on acoustics.
- Using the oscillation of a magnetic dipole to determine the strength of the field close to a wire carrying current, they discovered what today is called the Biot-Savart law.
- Magnetic fields produced by electric currents can be calculated using the Biot-Savart law which they presented to the Academy of Sciences on 30 October 1820.
- A joint Biot-Savart paper Note sur le magnétisme de la pile de Volta Ⓣ(Note on the magnetism of the Voltaic pile) was published in the Annales de chemie et de physique in 1820.
- Biot helped Savart find a teaching position in Paris and from 1820 he taught science in a private school there.
- On 5 November 1827, Savart was elected to the physics section of the Academy of Sciences to replace Fresnel who had died in July of that year.
- In addition to the 1819 paper we mentioned above, Savart also carried out experiments on sound which became important for later students of acoustics.
- He also developed the Savart disk, a device which produced a sound wave of known frequency, using a rotating cog wheel as a measuring device.
- By an extension of this method, Savart compounded musical notes.
- There were other topics that interested Savart and on which he undertook research.
- When it was realised that, in the case of partial obstruction to the flow of blood, the murmur is produced not at, or proximal to, the site of obstruction but in the fluid beyond, it was presumed that a mechanism like that revealed by Savart was involved.
- Although one of Savart's main aims in going to Paris was to publish his translation of Celsus's De medicina the work never appeared.
- It seems that Savart became diverted into more interesting directions.
- For example he published Quelques faits résultant de la réflexion des ondes sonores Ⓣ(Some facts resulting from the reflection of sound waves) (1839), and at least three further papers after the death of Félix.
- Félix Savart was honoured by having a street in Mézières named after him.
Born 30 June 1791, Mézières, France. Died 16 March 1841, Paris, France.
View full biography at MacTutor
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
