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Carnot, (Nicolas Léonard) Sadi 1796-1832
French physicist

Born in Paris, he was the son of Lazare Carnot. After studying at the École Polytechnique and the École de l'Artillerie, he became a captain of engineers, but from 1819 concentrated on scientific research. In his sole published work, Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu (1824, Eng trans Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, 1890), he applied for the first time scientific principles to an analysis of the working cycle and efficiency of the steam engine, arriving at an early form of the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of reversibility in the form of the ideal Carnot cycle. His work became known through the reinterpretation of Bénoit Clapeyron, and was taken up by Rudolf Clausius and Lord Kelvin from the late 1840s.

Bibliography: Robert R Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled (1941)