In her article “Mingling art and science opens minds” (Physics Today, April 2021, page 24), Toni Feder mentions many interesting intersections between visual art and science. In 1819 physicist Félix Savart (1791–1841) said, “The efforts of scientists and those of artists are going to unite to bring to perfection an art that, for so long, has been limited to blind routine.”1
Trapezoidal violin by Félix Savart. (Adapted from E. Heron-Allen, Violin-Making, As It Was and Is, E. Howe, 1914, p. 117.)
Trapezoidal violin by Félix Savart. (Adapted from E. Heron-Allen, Violin-Making, As It Was and Is, E. Howe, 1914, p. 117.)
Savart is best known to physicists through the Biot–Savart law in electromagnetism. He is, however, also known for studying the acoustics of violins.2 His friendship with luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (1798–1875) provided Savart with opportunities to investigate instruments made by Antonio Stradivari (ca. 1644–1737). Savart started asking how we could understand the performance of a violin from the plates before they are assembled.3 He even made a trapezoidal violin (see the sketches above) whose acoustics proved that the instrument’s characteristic shape serves only aesthetic purposes. For him the art is about the violin.
