Experiments of quenching were made with cylindrical specimens of carbon steel S45C of diameters from 12 to 30mm were performed. The specimens were heated by electric furnace and quenched by immersion method. In order to analyze the temperature profile(cooling curves) of carbon steel including the latent heat of phase transformation, nonlinear heat conduction problem was calculated by the numerical method of inverse heat conduction problem using the apparent heat capacity method. The difference between the calculated and the experimented cooling curves was caused by the latent heat of phase transformation, and the effects of the latent heat were especially manifest at the cooling curves of center of specimens. The temperature and the quantity of the latent heat of phase transformation depend on the cooling speed at A sub(1) transformation point, and the region for cooling speed to become zero was caused by the latent heat of phase transformation.