Hippolyte Carnot

Unable to enter active political life, he turned to literature and philosophy, publishing in 1828 a collection of Chants helléniens translated from the German of Wilhelm Müller, and in 1830 an Exposé de la doctrine Saint-Simonienne, and collaborating in the Saint-Simonian journal Le Producteur.

Alphonse de Lamartine 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."

He joined the Gauche républicaine parliamentary group and participated in the drawing up of the Constitutional Laws of 1875.

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