194 Chapter 12
time, Savart turned from his investigations of violins to studies of magnetic action, paral-
leling Ø rsted ’ s path from sound to electromagnetism. After finishing his work on the
committee judging Savart ’ s trapezoidal violin, his colleague Biot joined him in the detailed
study of electromagnetic action that became their most famous work. Ø rsted ’ s orientation
toward the holistic generalities exalted by Naturphilosophie shaped his qualitative descrip-
tion of the circular lines of force surrounding a conducting wire. In contrast, Biot and
Savart ’ s immersion in the decidedly mathematical orientation of French physics is manifest
in the quantitative law for the magnetic field strength, known by both their names (though
in its mathematical detail very much also the work of Andr é -Marie Amp è re): the Biot –
Savart law.^29 The larger French research tradition informed both their work on sound and
on electromagnetism, but for them, as for Ø rsted, sound came first.