Chladni is nowadays thought to be the ‘father’ of acoustics, but was originally a lawyer. He studied at Leipzig in Germany and, as soon as he was able, left the law and pursued his two passions of science and music.
Lawyers sometimes note the similarity, in their view, between the details they have to deal with, and the precision and rigour of physics. I would argue that the laws of law are decided by humans and the society in which they function. The role of the lawyer, it seems to me, is to follow paths of logic from those laws. I would contend that physicists look for laws of nature that are universal, made by nature, not by people. But perhaps the training of a lawyer and of a physicist prepares both for logical study and, on occasions, throwing caution to the wind and using imagination.
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