Copernicus Award Copernicus Award The Nicolaus Copernicus Polish-German Research Award (also known as Copernicus Award) is a biannual science award conferred by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Foundation for Polish Science "to the individuals most active in Polish-German scientific cooperation who have made exceptional research achievements as a result of that cooperation." The award was established in 2006 and is named after Renaissance astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). It carries a cash prize of €200,000 shared equally by two winners, one from Germany and one from Poland. In order to be eligible for the award, candidates must have at least a doctoral degree
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (; 1 June 1796 – 24 August 1832) was a French military engineer and physicist, often described as the "father of thermodynamics". Like Copernicus, he published only one book, the "Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire" (Paris, 1824), in which he expressed, at the age of 27 years, the first successful theory of the maximum efficiency of heat engines. In this work he laid the foundations of an entirely new discipline, thermodynamics. Carnot's work attracted little attention during his lifetime, but it was later used by Rudolf Clausius and Lord Kelvin