Carnot, Lazare

Sadi Carnot (full name Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot, Sadi after a Persian poet) was bom into one of the most emdite and influential families of the turbulent Napoleonic period. Sadi s father, Lazare Carnot, was a leading scientist and mathematician of his time, as well as a noted military commander who achieved high ministerial office under Napoleon. The father s profound intellectual influence on Sadi is apparent from parallels between Lazare s 1803 treatise, Fundamental Principles of Equilibrium and Movement, and Sadi s famous 1824 monograph, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (Reflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu), which applied similarly general and abstract analysis to purely mechanical and thermomechanical devices, respectively. Among other accomplishments of this remarkable family, Sadi s younger brother, Hippolyte, became a noted writer and statesman, and the latter s eldest son, Marie Francois Sadi Carnot, later became a president of the Third Republic. 

Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot, the French engineer and physicist, was bom in Paris in 1796. His father, Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot, was in the French military service. Sadi Camot is considered as the founder of modem thermodynamics. Famous for his invaluable contributions to science and thermodynamics, Sadi Camot was honored with the title Father of Thermodynamics. Some of his noteworthy contributions to thermodynamics are the concepts of Camot heat engine, Camot cycle, Carnot s theorem, Camot efficiency, and reversible cycle. 

Carnot s father was the engineer Lazare Nicolas Carnot, who had been a war minister under Napoleon and was known as the Organizer of Victory. Sadi Carnot was educated by his father until he entered the Polytechnique. During the Napoleonic wars he volunteered to fight, though he was exempt as a student. When the Restoration exiled his father, Sadi found his military career hampered by politics. He went on half-pay and resumed his engineering studies. 

Carnot described his general analysis of heat engines in his only scientific publication. Reflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu, et sur les Machines Propres a Developper cette Puissance Reflections on the Motive Force of Fire and on the Machines Fitted to Develop that Power) [1]. Six hundred copies of this work were published in 1824 at Carnot s own expense. At that time, the name Carnot was well known to the scientific community in France due to the fame of Sadi s father, Lazare Carnot. Still, Sadi Carnot s book did not attract much attention from the scientific community at the time of its publication. Eight years after the publication of his Reflexions, Sadi Carnot died of cholera. A year later, Emile Clape5Ton (1799-1864) came across Carnot s book, realized its fundamental importance and made it known to the scientific community. 

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