[6] Being a very good student, 12-year-old Diesel received the Société pour l'Instruction Elémentaire bronze medal[7] and had plans to enter Ecole Primaire Supérieure in 1870.

[8] At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War the same year, his family were deported to England, settling in London, where Diesel attended an English-speaking school.

After finishing his basic education at the top of his class in 1873, he enrolled at the newly founded Industrial School of Augsburg.

Two years later, he received a merit scholarship from the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich, which he accepted against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to begin working instead.

While waiting for the next examination date, he gained practical engineering experience at the Sulzer Brothers Machine Works in Winterthur, Switzerland.

Diesel graduated in January 1880 with highest academic honours and returned to Paris, where he assisted Linde with the design and construction of a modern refrigeration and ice plant.

In 1883, Diesel married Martha Flasche, and continued to work for Linde, gaining numerous patents in both Germany and France.

[11] Ever since attending lectures of von Linde, Diesel worked on designing an internal combustion engine that could approach the maximum theoretical thermal efficiency of the Carnot cycle.

[15] Diesel's design utilised compression ignition as opposed to using spark plugs similar to gas engines, with the ability to be run on biodiesel, if not petroleum-originating fuels.

Compression engines are circa 30% more efficient over conventional gas burning engines, being mixed through forced compressed air within the combustion chamber, leading to a higher internal temperature, expanding at a higher rate and placing further pressure over the pistons that rotate the crankshaft towards a quicker rate.

[17] The first successful diesel engine Motor 250/400 was officially tested in 1897, featuring a 25 horsepower four-stroke, single vertical cylinder compression.

Having just revolutionised the engine manufacturing industry,[18] it became an immediate success,[19] with royalties amassing great wealth for Diesel.

She discovered 20,000 German marks in cash[23] (US$120,000 today) and financial statements indicating that their bank accounts were virtually empty.

[24] In a diary Diesel brought with him on the ship, for the date 29 September 1913, a cross was drawn, possibly indicating death.

[22] Ten days after he was last seen, the crew of the Dutch pilot boat Coertsen came upon the corpse of a man floating in the Eastern Scheldt.

Another line of thought suggests that he was murdered, given his refusal to grant the German forces the exclusive rights to using his invention; indeed, Diesel had boarded Dresden with the intent of meeting with representatives of the Royal Navy to discuss the possibility of powering British submarines by diesel engine.

I have recently repeated these experiments on a large scale with full success and entire confirmation of the results formerly obtained.