Charles Coulston Gillispie

Also available online as part of the Gale Virtual Reference Library under the title Complete dictionary of scientific biography.

Dictionary of Scientific Biography

American Council of Learned Societies

Raffaele Pisano

Lazare Carnot was the unique example in the history of science of someone who inadvertently owed the scientific recognition he eventually achieved to earlier political prominence. He and his son Sadi produced work that derived from their training as engineering and went largely unnoticed by physicists for a generation or more, even though their respective work introduced concepts that proved fundamental when taken up later by other hands. There was, moreover, a filial as well as substantive relation between the work of father and son. Sadi applied to the functioning of heat engines the analysis that his father had developed in his study of the operation of ordinary machines. Specifically, Sadi's idea of a reversible process originated in the use his father made of geometric motions in the analysis of machines in general. This unique book shows how the two Carnots influenced each other in their work in the fields of mechanics and thermodynamics and how future generations of scientists have further benefited from their work.

A Scientific and Filial Relationship

Lazare and Sadi Carnot

By the end of the eighteenth century, the French dominated the world of science. And although science and politics had little to do with each other directly, there were increasingly frequent intersections. This is a study of those transactions between science and state, knowledge and power--on the eve of the French Revolution. Charles Gillispie explores how the links between science and polity in France were related to governmental reform, modernization of the economy, and professionalization of science and engineering.

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years

Science and Polity in France

Frederic Lawrence Holmes

Michel Dewachter

The Napoleonic Edition : the Complete Archaeological Plates from la Description de L'Egypte

Monuments of Egypt

The End of the Old Regime

This vividly illustrated book introduces the reader to the brothers Montgolfier, who launched the first hotair balloon in Annonay, France on 4 June 1783. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

With a Word on the Importance of Ballooning for the Science of Heat and the Art of Building Railroads

The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation 1783-1784

Essays and Reviews in History and History of Science

Ivor Grattan-Guinness

Pierre-Simon Laplace was among the most influential scientists in history. Often referred to as the lawgiver of French science, he is known for his technical contributions to exact science, for the philosophical point of view he developed in the presentation of his work, and for the leading part he took in forming the modern discipline of mathematical physics. His two most famous treatises were the five-volume Traite de mecanique celeste (1799-1825) and Theorie analytique des probabilites (1812). In the former, he demonstrated mathematically the stability of the solar system in accordance with the universal Newtonian law of gravity. In the latter, he developed probability from a set of miscellaneous problems concerning games, averages, mortality, and insurance risks. These estimates of error and statistical inferences could be applied to social, medical, and legal matters, as well as to the physical sciences. This book traces the development of Laplace's research program and of his participation in the Academy of Science during the last decades of the Old Regime into the early years of the French Revolution.

Charles Coulston Gillispie

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