Karno, Sadi

The son of the famous revolutionary, military leader, engineer and mathematician Lazar Carnot , the elder brother of the politician Hippolyte Carnot and uncle Sadi Carnot named after him, in 1887-1894, President of France . Lazar Carnot gave his son a third name (by which he entered history) in honor of the Persian poet Sufi Saadi Shirazi .

Sadi Carnot received a good home education. In 1812, he brilliantly graduated from the Lyceum of Charlemagne and entered the Polytechnic School in Paris - the best educational institution of France at that time, including Andre-Marie Ampère , Francois Arago , Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac , Louis Jacques Tenard and Simeon Denis Poisson . Among the classmates of Carnot were Michel Shal and Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis . In 1814, he graduated from the Paris Polytechnic as the sixth by achievement and was sent to the School of Engineering in the city of Metz , after which it was completed in 1816, he was assigned to an engineering regiment, where he spent several years. During this time, Napoleon Bonaparte’s “ One Hundred Days ” happened, who appointed Father Carnot as Minister of the Interior at the time; after the final defeat of the emperor and the return of the monarchy of Louis XVIII in 1815, Lazar Carnot was forced to leave the country.

The son of the leader of the Great French Revolution and the creator of the French Revolutionary Army was not easy during the years of the restoration of the Bourbons , and his many reports on the inspection of fortifications were simply ignored, but in 1819 he won the competition to fill a vacancy in the General Staff Corps in Paris and moved there. In Paris, Carnot continued his studies. Attended lectures at the Sorbonne , the College de France , the Conservatory of Arts and Crafts . There he met a chemist, Nikola Clement , who studied gas. Communication with him aroused Karno’s interest in the study of steam engines .

And in 1824, the first and only work of Sadi Carnot came out - “Reflections on the driving force of fire and on machines capable of developing this power” ( Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur machines propres à développer cette puissance ). This work is considered fundamental in thermodynamics . It analyzed the steam engines that existed at that time, and the conditions were found under which the efficiency reaches its maximum value (in steam engines of that time, the efficiency did not exceed 2%). In addition, the basic concepts of thermodynamics were also introduced there: ideal heat engine (see heat engine ), ideal cycle (see Carnot cycle ), reversibility and irreversibility of thermodynamic processes. In essence, Carnot formulated the first ( energy conservation law ) and the second law of thermodynamics (in the formulation “The greatest efficiency of a heat engine does not depend on the working fluid and is determined only by the temperature within which the engine runs,” in which heat appears instead of entropy ).

In 1828, Carnot left military service. He worked a lot, despite the fact that in 1830 there was another French revolution . Carnot died in 1832 of cholera . According to the rules, all his property, including paper, was burned. Thus, his scientific legacy was lost. Only one notebook survived - the first law of thermodynamics was formulated in it.

• Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur les machines propres développer cette puissance, nouv. éd., P., [1953] (in Russian translation - "Reflections on the driving force of fire and on machines capable of developing this force", M., 1923; the same, in the collection: "The Second Law of Thermodynamics", M., 1934, pp. 17-61)

In 1970, the International Astronomical Union named the name Sadi Carnot the crater on the far side of the moon .

• Cycle Carnot
• Carnot theorem (thermodynamics)

• V.V. Koshmanov. Carnot, Clapeyron, Clausius. M .: Enlightenment, 1985.
• Mario Lozzi. History of Physics. M .: Mir, 1970.
• Radzig A. A. , Sadi Carnot and his “Reflections on the Driving Force of Fire”, in the book: Archives of the History of Science and Technology, in. 3, L., 1934
• Fradkin L. Z., Sadi Carnot. His life and work. To the 100th anniversary of the death. 1832-1932, M. - L., 1932
• Khramov Yu. A. Carnot Nicola Leonard Sadi // Physics: A Biographical Reference / Ed. A.I. Akhiezer . - Ed. 2nd, rev. and add. - M .: Science , 1983. - p. 127. - 400 p. - 200 000 copies (in the lane)
• La Mer V.S., Some Current Misinterpretations of NL Sadi Carnot's memoir and cycle, American Journal of Physics, 1954, v. 22, No. 1.