Sadi Carnot
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.030976
It’s the birthday of Sadi Carnot, who was born in 1796 in Paris. Like his father, Carnot studied mathematics and became a military engineer. At the age of 28, when on leave from a position on the French General Staff, Carnot wrote the founding document of thermodynamics, “Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Power.” His revolutionary insight was to analyze steam engines as abstract heat engines. Using that approach he determined that work comes from temperature differences, that heat engines should be treated as cyclic and that heat exchange is a reversible process. Carnot died during a cholera epidemic in 1832 at the age of 36.
Date in History: 1 June 1796
