Joseph Sauveur
Encyclopedia
Joseph Sauveur was a French mathematician
and physicist
. He was a professor of mathematics
and in 1696 became a member of the French Academy of Sciences
.
. At seventeen, his uncle agreed to finance his studies in philosophy and theology at Paris. Joseph, however, discovered Euclid
and turned to anatomy and botany. He soon met Cordemoy, reader to the son of Louis XIV; and Cordemoy soon sang his praises to Bossuet
, preceptor to the Dauphin. Despite his handicap, Joseph promptly began teaching mathematics to the Dauphine's pages and also to a number of princes, among them Eugene of Savoy. By 1680, he was something of a pet at court, where he gave anatomy courses to courtiers and calculated for them the odds in the game called "basset."
In 1681, Sauveur did the mathematical calculations for a waterworks project for the "Grand Condé's"
estate at Chantilly
, working with Edmé Mariotte
, the "father of French hydraulics. Condé became very fond of Sauveur and severely reprimanded anyone who laughed at the mathematician's speech impediment. Condé would invite Saveur to stay at Chantilly. It was there that Sauveur did his work on hydrostatics.
During the summer of 1689, Sauveur was chosen to be the science and mathematics teacher for the Duke of Chartres
, Louis XIV's nephew. For the prince, he drew up a manuscript outlining the "elements" of geometry and, in collaboration with Marshal Vauban
, a manuscript on the "elements of military fortification." (In 1691 Sauveur and Chartres were present at the siege of Mons
by the French.) Another of the prince's teachers was Étienne Loulié
, a musician engaged to teach him the "elements" of musical theory and notation. Loulié and Sauveur joined forces to show the prince how mathematics and musical theory were inter-related. Remnants of this joint course have survived in Sauveur's manuscript treatise on the theory of music, and in Loulié's Éléments. In the years that followed, Sauveur taught mathematics to various princes of the royal family. In 1686 he obtained the mathematics chair at the Collège de France
, which granted him a rare exemption: since he was incapable of reciting a speech from memory, he was permitted to read his inaugural lecture.
Circa 1694, Sauveur began working with Loulié on "the science of sound", that is, acoustics
. As Fontenelle put it, Sauveur laid out a vast plan that amounted to the "discovery of an unknown country", and that created for him a "personal empire", the study of "acoustical sound" (le son acoustique). But, as Fontenelle pointed out, "He had neither a voice nor hearing, yet he could think only of music. He was reduced to borrowing the voice and the ear of someone else. and in return he gave hitherto unknown demonstrations to musicians." The Duke of Chartres
did everything he could to make the undertaking successful. Sauveur's work, continued Fontenelle, resulted in "a new musical language that was more convenient and more broad, a new system of sounds, an unusual monochord
, and échomètre, fixed sound [le son fixe, that is, absolute frequency], the nodes of undulating strings. [...] This pushed him all the way to the music of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Arabs, the Turks and the Persians."
Sauveur is known principally for his detailed studies on acoustics
. Indeed, he has been credited with coining the term acoustique, which he derived from the ancient Greek word ακουστός, meaning "able to be heard". His work involved researching the correlation between frequency
and musical pitch
, and — putting Fontenelle's statements in modern terms — he conducted studies on subjects such as the vibrating string
, tuning pitch, harmonics, ranges of voices and musical instruments, et al. He also created a measure of intervals concerning the octave
. The following are some of the terms Sauveur used as logarithm
ic divisions:
In 1696, Saveur had been elected to the French Royal Academy of Sciences and most of his work on acoustics was therefore done under its aegis. He soon ran into what proved to be an insurmountable obstacle: the musicians who were serving as his ears and voices had become exasperated at the mathematician's insistence upon using those new measuring units, arguing that they were simply too small for the human ear to distinguish and the human voice to replicate. Furthermore, they did not like the equal tuning he was proposing for instruments, nor the pa, ra, ga, so, bo, and so forth that were supposed to replace the familiar ut, re, mi, fa, sol.... (Saveur had broken the octave 3,010 parts.) A break took place circa 1699, and Sauveur had difficulty completing some of his experiments. Actually, Loulié had begun going his own way by 1698, when he published a little book called the Nouveau Sistème, which presents his work with Saveur from a musician's perspective. Loulié's surviving manuscripts round out the musician's contributions to Sauveur's project.
It was not until 1701 that Sauveur presented the results of his research to the Academy. The presentation was studded with jibes about musicians and their closed minds. In this same presentation, he rightly criticized Loulié's practical inventions as insufficiently scientific. In 1696, Loulié had published a description of a metronome-like instrument called the "chronomètre, which Loulié had invented with practicing musicians in mind. Now, in 1701, Sauveur focused on the shortcomings of his former colleague's device, compared with his own échomètre: Loulié's invention was not based on the second, and the swings of the pendulum were not related to one specific note value. In that same presentation before the Academy, Sauveur presented his own monocorde for tuning harpsichords (it was based on an octave divided into equal units composed of the tiny, precise units of his "new system"); and he contrasted his invention with Loulié's sonomètre, approved by the Academy in 1699, which replicated the unequal intervals actually being in used in France.
Saveur, whom a contemporary described as "over-obliging, gentle, and humorless", was declared a "pensioned veteran" of the Academy in on March 4, 1699. He died in 1716.
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
and physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
. He was a professor of mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and in 1696 became a member of the French Academy of Sciences
French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
.
Life
Joseph Sauveur was the son of a provincial notary. Despite a hearing and speech impairment that kept him totally mute until he was seven, Joseph — described as a "machinist since birth — benefited from a fine education at the Jesuit College of La FlècheLa Flèche
La Flèche is a municipality located in the French department of Sarthe and the region of Pays de la Loire in the Loire Valley. This is the sub-prefecture of the South-Sarthe, the chief district and the chief city of a canton. This is the second most populous city of the department. The city is part...
. At seventeen, his uncle agreed to finance his studies in philosophy and theology at Paris. Joseph, however, discovered Euclid
Euclid
Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...
and turned to anatomy and botany. He soon met Cordemoy, reader to the son of Louis XIV; and Cordemoy soon sang his praises to Bossuet
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet was a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist....
, preceptor to the Dauphin. Despite his handicap, Joseph promptly began teaching mathematics to the Dauphine's pages and also to a number of princes, among them Eugene of Savoy. By 1680, he was something of a pet at court, where he gave anatomy courses to courtiers and calculated for them the odds in the game called "basset."
In 1681, Sauveur did the mathematical calculations for a waterworks project for the "Grand Condé's"
Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé
Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé was a French general and the most famous representative of the Condé branch of the House of Bourbon. Prior to his father's death in 1646, he was styled the Duc d'Enghien...
estate at Chantilly
Château de Chantilly
The Château de Chantilly is a historic château located in the town of Chantilly, France. It comprises two attached buildings; the Grand Château, destroyed during the French Revolution and rebuilt in the 1870s, and the Petit Château which was built around 1560 for Anne de Montmorency...
, working with Edmé Mariotte
Edme Mariotte
Edme Mariotte was a French physicist and priest.- Biography :Edme Mariotte was the youngest son of Simon Mariotte, administrator at the district Til-Châtel , and Catherine Denisot . His parents lived in Til-Châtel and had 4 other children: Jean, Denise, Claude, and Catharine...
, the "father of French hydraulics. Condé became very fond of Sauveur and severely reprimanded anyone who laughed at the mathematician's speech impediment. Condé would invite Saveur to stay at Chantilly. It was there that Sauveur did his work on hydrostatics.
During the summer of 1689, Sauveur was chosen to be the science and mathematics teacher for the Duke of Chartres
Duke of Chartres
Originally, the Duchy of Chartres was the comté de Chartres, an Earldom. The title of comte de Chartres thus became duc de Chartres. This duchy–peerage was given by Louis XIV of France to his nephew, Philippe II d'Orléans, at his birth in 1674...
, Louis XIV's nephew. For the prince, he drew up a manuscript outlining the "elements" of geometry and, in collaboration with Marshal Vauban
Vauban
Sébastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban and later Marquis de Vauban , commonly referred to as Vauban, was a Marshal of France and the foremost military engineer of his age, famed for his skill in both designing fortifications and breaking through them...
, a manuscript on the "elements of military fortification." (In 1691 Sauveur and Chartres were present at the siege of Mons
Siege of Mons (1691)
The Siege of Mons, 15 March–10 April 1691, was a major operation fought during the Nine Years' War, and was the main French objective for the 1691 campaign in the Spanish Netherlands. The city was besieged and captured before the normal commencement of the campaigning season with minimal losses...
by the French.) Another of the prince's teachers was Étienne Loulié
Étienne Loulié
Étienne Loulié , was a musician, pedagogue and musical theorist.-Life:Born into a family of Parisian sword-finishers, Loulié learned both musical practice...
, a musician engaged to teach him the "elements" of musical theory and notation. Loulié and Sauveur joined forces to show the prince how mathematics and musical theory were inter-related. Remnants of this joint course have survived in Sauveur's manuscript treatise on the theory of music, and in Loulié's Éléments. In the years that followed, Sauveur taught mathematics to various princes of the royal family. In 1686 he obtained the mathematics chair at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
, which granted him a rare exemption: since he was incapable of reciting a speech from memory, he was permitted to read his inaugural lecture.
Circa 1694, Sauveur began working with Loulié on "the science of sound", that is, acoustics
Acoustics
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
. As Fontenelle put it, Sauveur laid out a vast plan that amounted to the "discovery of an unknown country", and that created for him a "personal empire", the study of "acoustical sound" (le son acoustique). But, as Fontenelle pointed out, "He had neither a voice nor hearing, yet he could think only of music. He was reduced to borrowing the voice and the ear of someone else. and in return he gave hitherto unknown demonstrations to musicians." The Duke of Chartres
Duke of Chartres
Originally, the Duchy of Chartres was the comté de Chartres, an Earldom. The title of comte de Chartres thus became duc de Chartres. This duchy–peerage was given by Louis XIV of France to his nephew, Philippe II d'Orléans, at his birth in 1674...
did everything he could to make the undertaking successful. Sauveur's work, continued Fontenelle, resulted in "a new musical language that was more convenient and more broad, a new system of sounds, an unusual monochord
Monochord
A monochord is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument. The word "monochord" comes from the Greek and means literally "one string." A misconception of the term lies within its name. Often a monochord has more than one string, most of the time two, one open string and a second string...
, and échomètre, fixed sound [le son fixe, that is, absolute frequency], the nodes of undulating strings. [...] This pushed him all the way to the music of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Arabs, the Turks and the Persians."
Sauveur is known principally for his detailed studies on acoustics
Acoustics
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
. Indeed, he has been credited with coining the term acoustique, which he derived from the ancient Greek word ακουστός, meaning "able to be heard". His work involved researching the correlation between frequency
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
and musical pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
, and — putting Fontenelle's statements in modern terms — he conducted studies on subjects such as the vibrating string
Vibrating string
A vibration in a string is a wave. Usually a vibrating string produces a sound whose frequency in most cases is constant. Therefore, since frequency characterizes the pitch, the sound produced is a constant note....
, tuning pitch, harmonics, ranges of voices and musical instruments, et al. He also created a measure of intervals concerning the octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
. The following are some of the terms Sauveur used as logarithm
Logarithm
The logarithm of a number is the exponent by which another fixed value, the base, has to be raised to produce that number. For example, the logarithm of 1000 to base 10 is 3, because 1000 is 10 to the power 3: More generally, if x = by, then y is the logarithm of x to base b, and is written...
ic divisions:
- méride: 1/43 part of an octave
- eptaméride (or heptaméride): 1/301 part of an octave, or 1/7 of a méride; this term would later be known as a savartSavartThe savart is a unit of measurement for musical intervals . One savart is equal to one thousandth of a decade. Today the savart has largely been replaced by the cent and the millioctave...
. - demi-heptaméride: 1/602 part of an octave; 1/2 of an eptaméride.
- decaméride: 1/3010 part of an octave; 1/10 of an eptaméride
- Also 1/55 of an octave would become known as a "Sauveur commaComma (music)In music theory, a comma is a minute interval, the difference resulting from tuning one note two different ways. The word "comma" used without qualification refers to the syntonic comma, which can be defined, for instance, as the difference between an F tuned using the D-based Pythagorean tuning...
".
In 1696, Saveur had been elected to the French Royal Academy of Sciences and most of his work on acoustics was therefore done under its aegis. He soon ran into what proved to be an insurmountable obstacle: the musicians who were serving as his ears and voices had become exasperated at the mathematician's insistence upon using those new measuring units, arguing that they were simply too small for the human ear to distinguish and the human voice to replicate. Furthermore, they did not like the equal tuning he was proposing for instruments, nor the pa, ra, ga, so, bo, and so forth that were supposed to replace the familiar ut, re, mi, fa, sol.... (Saveur had broken the octave 3,010 parts.) A break took place circa 1699, and Sauveur had difficulty completing some of his experiments. Actually, Loulié had begun going his own way by 1698, when he published a little book called the Nouveau Sistème, which presents his work with Saveur from a musician's perspective. Loulié's surviving manuscripts round out the musician's contributions to Sauveur's project.
It was not until 1701 that Sauveur presented the results of his research to the Academy. The presentation was studded with jibes about musicians and their closed minds. In this same presentation, he rightly criticized Loulié's practical inventions as insufficiently scientific. In 1696, Loulié had published a description of a metronome-like instrument called the "chronomètre, which Loulié had invented with practicing musicians in mind. Now, in 1701, Sauveur focused on the shortcomings of his former colleague's device, compared with his own échomètre: Loulié's invention was not based on the second, and the swings of the pendulum were not related to one specific note value. In that same presentation before the Academy, Sauveur presented his own monocorde for tuning harpsichords (it was based on an octave divided into equal units composed of the tiny, precise units of his "new system"); and he contrasted his invention with Loulié's sonomètre, approved by the Academy in 1699, which replicated the unequal intervals actually being in used in France.
Saveur, whom a contemporary described as "over-obliging, gentle, and humorless", was declared a "pensioned veteran" of the Academy in on March 4, 1699. He died in 1716.