Anders Celsius was a Swedish scientist born in Uppsala in the early 1700s. His father was a professor of astronomy at the University of Uppsala, where Celsius’s uncle and grandfather had held positions.
He is very talented in mathematics from the early age, was appointed professor in astronomy in 1730.
During student times he became engaged in general problem of weights and measures, including temperature measurements. Anders Celsius should be recognized as the first to perform and publish careful experiments aiming at the definition of an international temperature scale on scientific grounds.
In 1742 he presented a paper before the Swedish Academy of Sciences wherein he laid out his proposal for his new thermometer, based on a scale of 100 intervals or degrees.
He determined the dependence of the boiling of water with atmospheric pressure (in excellence agreement with modern data). He further gave a rule the determination of the boiling point if the barometric pressure deviates from a certain standard pressure.
Celsius died on April 25, 1744, in Uppsala. Five years after his death his colleagues at the Uppsala Observatory inverted the Celsius scale so that 0 degrees correspond to the freezing point of water and 100 degrees corresponded to the boiling point.
In 1948, the Ninth General Conference of Weights and Measures ruled that ‘degrees centigrade’ would be referred to as ‘degrees Celsius,’ in his honor.
History of Celsius
