Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

from Encyclopaedia Britannica

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (b. May 24, 1686 in Gdansk,died Sept. 16, 1736, The Hague), German physicist and maker of scientific instruments. He is best known for inventing the alcohol thermometer (1709) and mercury thermometer (1714) and for developing the Fahrenheit temperature scale; this scale is still commonly used in the United States.

Fahrenheit spent most of his life in the Netherlands, where he devoted himself to the study of physics and the manufacture of precision meteorological instruments. He discovered, among other things, that water can remain liquid below its freezing point and that the boiling point of liquids varies with atmospheric pressure.

Fahrenheit temperature scale, scale based on 32 degree for the freezing point of water and 212 degree for the boiling point of water, the interval between the two being divided into 180 parts. The 18th-century German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit originally took as the zero of his scale the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture and selected the values of 30 degree and 90 degree for the freezing point of water and normal body temperature, respectively; these later were revised to 32 degree and 96 degree, but the final scale required an adjustment to 98.6 degree for the latter value.

Until the 1970s the Fahrenheit scale was in general common use in the English-speaking countries; the Celsius, or centigrade, scale was employed in most other countries and for scientific purposes worldwide. Since that time, however, most English-speaking countries have officially adopted the Celsius scale. The conversion formula for a temperature that is expressed on the Celsius representation is: F = (9/5 C) + 32.

Last updated on Thursday, October 21, 2004 09:02 AM