Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit ( born May 24, 1686, Gdansk, † September 16th 1736 in The Hague ) was a German physicist and inventor of measuring instruments. According to him, the temperature unit " degrees Fahrenheit " ° F was named.

Origin

His parents were living in Gdansk Daniel Fahrenheit and Concordia (born Schumann and related products. Runge ). The mother Concordia came from the well-known Danzig business family Schumann. Daniel was the oldest of five children (two sons, three daughters ) and survived as the only the first years of life in the Gdansk Hundegasse ( to 1378 Brauergasse, 1945 Ul. Ogarna 95). His grandfather Reinhold Fahrenheit was pulled from Kneiphof / Königsberg ( Prussia ) to Gdansk and had established there as a merchant. The family probably originated in Hildesheim, Daniel's great-grandfather had lived in Rostock but before he had moved to Königsberg.

Life

His parents had died early, probably the consumption of poisonous mushrooms. This Fahrenheit was forced to accept a merchant apprenticeship in Amsterdam. He then traveled widely and settled in 1717 in the Dutch city of The Hague as a glass blower down, to deal mainly with the construction of barometers, altimeters and thermometers. In 1718 he held in Amsterdam lectures on chemistry. On May 7, 1724 and followed his was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Importance

Fahrenheit developed precise thermometers with 3 -point calibration ( Fahrenheit scale ) and established hereby thermometry. First he used as a thermometer substance alcohol, from about 1714 mercury. He got the idea when he read a paper by Guillaume Amontons in which the change in the display of mercury barometers was described with the temperature. Thus he invented the mercury thermometer ( this there was previously, but only by its calibration and its manufacturing method, it is also generally applicable). The zero point of his scale he used the lowest temperature he could produce with an ice -salt freezing mixture: -17.8 ° C.

In 1721 he discovered that water can be cooled considerably below its freezing point without freezing.

Fahrenheit also constructed a hydrometer, a pycnometer and a Hypsobarometer. For a time, the Fahrenheit scale was in Germany in use. In the United States today is still measured by Fahrenheit. Autographs of him are kept, among other things in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library.