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Celsius, Anders (1701-1744) was a Swedish astronomer, mathematician and physicist, now mostly
remembered for the Celsius scale of
temperature.
Celsius was born on 27 November 1701 in Uppsala, where his
father was Professor of Astronomy. In 1723 he became secretary of
the Uppsala Scientific Society; by the age of 30 he was himself
Professor of Astronomy there. It was at this time that he began to
travel extensively in Europe, visiting astronomers and observatories
in particular.
On his travels he observed the Aurora Borealis; he published some
of the first scientific documents on the phenomenon in 1733. While
in Paris he visited Pierre-Louis Maupertuis (1698-1759), who invited
him to join an expedition which centred on Torneå in
Lapland (now on the Finnish-Swedish border). It confirmed the theory
propounded by Newton that the Earth is flattened at the poles. With
knowledge and expertise gained in this way from the leading
astronomers and scientists throughout Europe, Celsius
returned to the University of Uppsala, where he built a new
observatory - the first installation of its kind in Sweden.
In 1742 Celsius presented a paper to the Swedish Academy
of Sciences containing a proposal that all scientific measurements
of temperature should be made on a fixed scale based on two
invariable (generally speaking) and naturally-occurring points. His
scale defined 0° as the temperature at which water boils,
and 100° as that at which water freezes. This scale, in an
inverted form devised eight years later by his pupil, Martin Strömer,
has since been used in almost all scientific work. Generally known
in most of Europe under the name of Celsius, in Britain the
scale has also commonly been known as Centigrade.
Celsius left several other important scientifc works,
including a paper on accurately determining the shape and size of
the Earth, some of the first attempts to gauge the magnitude of the
stars in the constellation Aries, and a study of the falling water
level of the Baltic Sea.
Author not available, Celsius, Anders
(1701-1744). , The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific
Biography, 01-01-1998.
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