Joseph Sauveur (24.03.1653-9.07.1716) —a French scientist, the founder of musical acoustics, member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1696). Born in La Flèche. In 1670 he came to Paris, where he studied mathematics, physics and medicine. He was later a teacher and tutor at the court of King Louis XIV. In 1686 he became head of a chair at the Royal College, and in 1703 an examiner in the Corps of Engineers.
His main physical research was devoted to acoustics. He studied the amplification of sound, developed a method of determining the frequency of sound and gave the first calculation of the length of a sound wave, investigated the vibrations of a string, in particular observing nodes and antinodes, determined the frequency of beats and established their nature. He noticed that when a string is excited, other sound tones exist alongside the fundamental (higher harmonics, or harmonic tones), standing in simple multiple ratios to the fundamental. He explained overtones. He was the first to determine the limits of audibility of sound, and measured the absolute number of vibrations by means of beats.