Abstract
IN La Nature of February 1, under the title “Grandeur et Modestie d'un savant Frangais: Sadi Carnot”, M. Roger Vene gives a sketch of the life and character of the young French engineer who wrote the famous essay “Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu”. Carnot was only twenty-eight years of age when he published the essay, and he died of cholera eight years later. According to the regulations, the clothes and papers belonging to the victims of the cholera epidemic which swept through Paris in 1832 were to be destroyed, but fortunately some of Carnot's manuscripts were saved by his friend Clapeyron. Born in the Petit Luxembourg when his father, Lazare Carnot, was a member of the Directory, Sadi had a brilliant career as a student of the Ecole Polytechnique but was too young to take part in the Napoleonic Wars, and his life was spent mainly in the routine of the barracks. The extracts given by M. Vene reveal a charming personality. The article is accompanied by a portrait of Carnot at the age of seventeen years. An article on Carnot appeared in our columns on August 20, 1932 (p. 266).
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Sadi Carnot, 1796–1833. Nature 131, 303 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131303b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131303b0