Lazare Hippolyte Carnot (October 6, 1801 – March 16, 1888) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 statesman.

Early life

Lazare was the younger brother of the founder of thermodynamics

Thermodynamics

Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...

 Sadi Carnot

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot was a French military engineer who, in his 1824 Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, gave the first successful theoretical account of heat engines, now known as the Carnot cycle, thereby laying the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics...

 and second son of the revolutionary politician Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot, who also served in the government of Napoleon. He was born at Saint-Omer

Saint-Omer

Saint-Omer , a commune and sub-prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais department west-northwest of Lille on the railway to Calais. The town is named after Saint Audomar, who brought Christianity to the area....

, Pas-de-Calais. After the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, his father went into exile. Hippolyte Carnot lived at first in exile with his father, returning to France only in 1823. Unable to enter active political life, he turned to literature and philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, publishing in 1828 a collection of Chants helléniens translated from the German of Wilhelm Müller

Wilhelm Müller

Wilhelm Müller was a German lyric poet.-Life:Wilhelm Müller was born at Dessau, the son of a tailor. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native town and at the university of Berlin, where he devoted himself to philological and historical studies...

, and in 1830 an Exposé de la doctrine Saint-Simonienne, and collaborating in the Saint-Simonian journal Le Producteur. He paid several visits to Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and travelled in other countries of Europe.

Overview

In March 1839 after the dissolution of the chamber by Louis Philippe

Louis-Philippe of France

Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...

, he was elected deputy for Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 (re-elected in 1842 and in 1846), and sat in the group of the Radical Left

Left-wing politics

In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

, being one of the leaders of the party hostile to Louis Philippe. On February 24, 1848 he pronounced in favour of the republic. Alphonse de Lamartine

Alphonse de Lamartine

Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...

 chose him as minister of education in the provisional government, and Carnot set to work to organize the primary school systems, proposing a law for obligatory and free primary instruction, and another for the secondary education of girls. He opposed purely secular schools, holding that "the minister and the schoolmaster are the two columns on which rests the edifice of the republic." By this attitude he alienated both the Right and the Republicans of the Extreme Left, and was forced to resign on July 5, 1848. He was one of those who protested against the coup d'état

Coup d'état

A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

of December 2, 1851, but was not proscribed by Louis Napoleon. He refused to sit in the Corps Législatif until 1864, in order not to have to take the oath to the emperor.

From 1864 to 1869 he was in the republican opposition, taking a very active part. He was defeated at the election of 1869. On February 8, 1871 he was named deputy for the Seine-et-Oise

Seine-et-Oise

Seine-et-Oise was a département of France encompassing the western, northern, and southern parts of the metropolitan area of Paris. Its préfecture was Versailles and its official number was 78. Seine-et-Oise was abolished in 1968....

 département, and participated in the drawing up of the Constitutional Laws of 1875. On December 16, 1875; he was named by the National Assembly senator for life

Senator for life

A senator for life is a member of the senate or equivalent upper chamber of a legislature who has life tenure. , 7 Italian Senators out of 322, 4 out of the 47 Burundian Senators and all members of the British House of Lords have lifetime tenure...

. He died three months after the election of his elder son, Marie François Sadi Carnot

Marie François Sadi Carnot

Marie François Sadi Carnot was a French statesman and the fourth president of the Third French Republic. He served as the President of France from 1887 until his assassination in 1894.-Early life:...

, to the presidency of the republic. He had published Le Ministère de l'Instruction Publique et des Cultes, depuis le 24 février jusqu'au 5 juillet 1848, Mémoires sur Carnot par son fils (2 vols., 1861-1864), Mémoires de Barère de Vieuzac (with David Angers, 4 vols 1842-1843). His second son, Marie Adolphe Carnot (b. 1830), became a distinguished mining engineer and director of the École des Mines (1899), his studies in analytical chemistry placing him in the front rank of French scientists. He was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1895.

See Vermorel

August Jean-Marie Vermorel

August Jean-Marie Vermorel was a French journalist.He was born at Denice.A radical and socialist, he was attached to the staff of the Presse and the Liberte . In the latter year he was appointed editor of the Courrier Français, and his attacks on the government in that organ led to his...

, Les Hommes de 1848 (3rd ed., 1869); Spuller

Eugène Spuller

Eugène Spuller was a French politician and writer.He was born at Seurre , his father being a German who had married and settled in France. After studying law at Dijon, he went to Paris, where he was called to the bar, and became close to Léon Gambetta, collaborating with him in 1868 in the...

, Histoire parlementaire de la Seconde Republique (1891); Pierre de La Gorce

Pierre de La Gorce

Pierre de La Gorce was a French magistrate, lawyer and historian, as well as a member of the Académie française....

, Histoire du Second Empire (1894 et seq.).