Sous-lieutenant Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (; 1 June 1796 – 24 August 1832) was a French mechanical engineer in the French Army, military scientist and physicist, and often described as the "father of thermodynamics." Like Copernicus, he published only one book, the Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (Paris, 1824), in which he expressed, at the age of 27 years, the first successful theory of the maximum efficiency of [engine]s.
Sadi was the elder brother of statesman Hippolyte Carnot and the uncle of Marie François Sadi Carnot, who would serve as President of France from 1887 to 1894. In 1811, at the age of 16, Sadi Carnot became a cadet in the École Polytechnique in Paris, where his classmates included Michel Chasles and Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis.
Thus, the school had become renowned for its mathematical instruction. After graduating in 1814, Sadi became an officer in the French army's corps of engineers.
His father Lazare had served as Napoleon's minister of the interior during the "Hundred Days", and, after Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, Lazare was forced into exile.
On 15 September 1818 he took a six-month leave to prepare for the entrance examination of Royal Corps of Staff and School of Application for the Service of the General Staff. In 1819, Sadi transferred to the newly formed General Staff in Paris.
On 15 September 1818 he took a six-month leave to prepare for the entrance examination of Royal Corps of Staff and School of Application for the Service of the General Staff. In 1819, Sadi transferred to the newly formed General Staff in Paris.
Sous-lieutenant Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (; 1 June 1796 – 24 August 1832) was a French mechanical engineer in the French Army, military scientist and physicist, and often described as the "father of thermodynamics." Like Copernicus, he published only one book, the Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (Paris, 1824), in which he expressed, at the age of 27 years, the first successful theory of the maximum efficiency of [engine]s.
He became interested in understanding the limitation to improving the performance of steam engines, which led him to the investigations that became his Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, published in 1824. Carnot retired from the army in 1828, without a pension.
In 1824 the principle of conservation of energy was still poorly developed and controversial, and an exact formulation of the first law of thermodynamics was still more than a decade away; the mechanical equivalence of heat would not be formulated for another two decades.
He became interested in understanding the limitation to improving the performance of steam engines, which led him to the investigations that became his Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, published in 1824. Carnot retired from the army in 1828, without a pension.
Sous-lieutenant Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (; 1 June 1796 – 24 August 1832) was a French mechanical engineer in the French Army, military scientist and physicist, and often described as the "father of thermodynamics." Like Copernicus, he published only one book, the Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (Paris, 1824), in which he expressed, at the age of 27 years, the first successful theory of the maximum efficiency of [engine]s.
He was interned in a private asylum in 1832 as suffering from "mania" and "general delirum", and he died of cholera shortly thereafter, aged 36, at the hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine. ==Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire== ===Background=== When Carnot began working on his book, steam engines had achieved widely recognized economic and industrial importance, but there had been no real scientific study of them.
He criticized established religion, though at the same time spoke in favor of "the belief in an all-powerful Being, who loves us and watches over us." He was a reader of Blaise Pascal, Molière and Jean de La Fontaine. ==Death== Carnot died during a cholera epidemic in 1832, at the age of 36.
The impact of the work had only become apparent once it was modernized by Émile Clapeyron in 1834 and then further elaborated upon by Clausius and Kelvin, who together derived from it the concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics.
Rankine, who introduced the term potential energy in 1853, was later made aware that an equivalent phrase, "in its purely mechanical sense, had been anticipated by Carnot", who had employed the term force vive virtuelle. On Carnot's religious views, he was a Philosophical theist.
Sadi was the elder brother of statesman Hippolyte Carnot and the uncle of Marie François Sadi Carnot, who would serve as President of France from 1887 to 1894. In 1811, at the age of 16, Sadi Carnot became a cadet in the École Polytechnique in Paris, where his classmates included Michel Chasles and Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis.
In 1890 an English translation of the book was published by R.
Sadi was the elder brother of statesman Hippolyte Carnot and the uncle of Marie François Sadi Carnot, who would serve as President of France from 1887 to 1894. In 1811, at the age of 16, Sadi Carnot became a cadet in the École Polytechnique in Paris, where his classmates included Michel Chasles and Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis.
Rudolf Diesel, for example, used Carnot's theories to design the diesel engine, in which the temperature of the hot reservoir is much higher than that of a steam engine, resulting in an engine which is more efficient. ==See also== History of the internal combustion engine == Works == Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (1824) == References == == Bibliography == (full text of 1897 ed.) () == External links == Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1890), English translation by R.
Srinivasan, Resonance, November 2001, 42 (PDF file) Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824), analysed on BibNum (click "À télécharger" for English analysis) 1796 births 1832 deaths 19th-century French mathematicians French deists École Polytechnique alumni French military engineers French scientists Thermodynamicists Deaths from cholera Infectious disease deaths in France People from Paris Fluid dynamicists Carnot family Conservatoire national des arts et métiers alumni
Thurston; this version has been reprinted in recent decades by Dover and by Peter Smith, most recently by Dover in 2005.
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