Lazare Carnot
Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, Comte Carnot (French pronunciation: [lazaʁ nikɔla maʁɡəʁit kaʁno]; 13 May 1753 – 2 August 1823) was a French mathematician, physicist, military officer, politician and a leading member of the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution. His military reforms, which included the introduction of mass conscription (levée en masse), were instrumental in transforming the French Revolutionary Army into an effective fighting force.
Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, Comte Carnot
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Mathematician, engineer, military commander, politician
1771–1815
Carnot was elected to the National Convention in 1792, and a year later he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety, where he directed the French war effort as one of the Ministers of War during the War of the First Coalition. He oversaw the reorganization of the army, imposed discipline, and significantly expanded the French force through the imposition of mass conscription. Credited with France's renewed military success from 1793 to 1794, Carnot came to be known as the "Organizer of Victory".
Increasingly disillusioned with the radical politics of the Montagnards, Carnot broke with Maximilien Robespierre and played a role in the latter's overthrow on 9 Thermidor and subsequent execution. He became one of the five initial members of the Directory but was ousted after the Coup of 18 Fructidor in 1797 and went into exile.
Following Napoleon's rise to power, Carnot returned to France and in 1800 was briefly Minister of War. A fervent Republican, he chose to withdraw from public life after Napoleon's coronation as Emperor. In 1812, he returned to serve under Napoleon and oversaw the defense of Antwerp against the Sixth Coalition, and during the Hundred Days he was Napoleon's Minister of the Interior. Carnot was exiled after the second Bourbon Restoration and died in Magdeburg, Prussia in 1823.
In addition to his political career, Carnot was also an eminent mathematician. His 1803 Géométrie de position is considered a pioneering work in the field of projective geometry. He is also remembered for developing the Carnot wall, a system of fortification that became widely employed in continental Europe during the 19th century.
Education and early life[edit]
Carnot was born on 13 May 1753 in the village of Nolay, in Burgundy, as the son of a local judge and royal notary, Claude Carnot and his wife, Marguerite Pothier. He was the second oldest of seven children. At the age of fourteen, Lazare and his brother were enrolled at the Collège d'Autun, where he focused on the study of philosophy and the classics. He held a strong belief in stoic philosophy and was deeply influenced by Roman civilization. When he turned fifteen, he left school in Autun to strengthen his philosophical knowledge and study under the Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice. During his short time with them, he studied logic, mathematics and theology under the Abbé Bison.
Impressed with Lazare's work as a scholar, the duc d'Aumont (Marquis de Nolay) recommended a military career for the youngster. Carnot was soon sent by his father to the Aumont residence to further his education. Here, he was enrolled in M. de Longpré's pension school in 1770 until he was ready to enter one of two prestigious engineering and artillery schools in Paris. A year later, in February 1771, he was ranked the third highest among twelve who were chosen out of his class of more than one hundred who took the entrance exams. It was at this point when he entered the École royale du génie de Mézières, appointed as a second lieutenant. Studies at the Mézières included geometry, mechanics, geometrical designing, geography, hydraulics and material preparation. On 1 January 1773 he graduated the school, ranked as a first lieutenant. He was eighteen years old.[1]
Carnot obtained a commission as a lieutenant in Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé's engineer corps. At this moment, he made a name for himself both in the line of (physics) theoretical engineering and in his work in the field of fortifications. While in the army, stationed in Calais, Cherbourg and Béthune, he continued his study of mathematics. In December 1783, he received a promotion to the rank of captain.[2]
In 1784 he published his first work Essay on Machines, which contained a statement that foreshadowed the principle of energy as applied to a falling weight, and the earliest proof that kinetic energy is lost in the collision of imperfectly elastic bodies. This publication earned him the honor of the Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres de Dijon. Another turning point was his essay on Vauban in which he praised the engineer on his works while at the same time developing his own career as a writer/engineer. Vauban's work had a profound effect on his work as a general and engineer. In 1786 he became acquainted with Robespierre, a lawyer in Arras, in the local literary club. In 1788 he returned to Béthune, where he was imprisoned with a lettre de cachet, because of a broken promise to marry a woman from Dijon. After his release he was stationed in Aire-sur-la-Lys and married Sophie Dupont from Saint-Omer in May 1791. For two months he served as president of the local literary society.[3]
He also published essays about engineering theory.
Essai sur les machines en général won honorable mention from the Academie sur Science of Paris in 1780. It was revised and published in 1783. In this he outlined a mathematical theory of power transmission in mechanical systems.
His essay Principes fondamentaux de l'équilibre et du mouvement 1803 was a further revision and expansion of the earlier work.
Carnot's son, Nicolas, was influenced by his father's work when he undertook his research into the thermal efficiency of steam engines.
Carnot's name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.