Carnot, Nicholas Léonard Sadi (1796-1832)
French physicist who, seeking to improve the efficiency of the steam engine, devised the Carnot cycle (1824) on the basis of which William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Rudolf Clausius formulated the second law of thermodynamics. The Carnot cycle, which postulates a heat engine working at maximum thermal efficiency, demonstrates that the efficiency of such an engine does not depend on its mode of operation but only the temperatures at which it accepts and discards heat energy.
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