Daniel Fahrenheit

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit, the originator of the era of precision thermometry.
Born	14 May 1686 (in old British sources as 14 May Old Style) Danzig/Gdańsk, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Died	16 September 1736(1736-09-16) (aged 50) The Hague, Dutch Republic
Nationality	Polish, Dutch
Fields	Physics, Thermometry
Known for	Exact thermometry (precision thermometry) Alcohol thermometer Mercury-in-glass thermometer (first reliable thermometer) Fahrenheit scale (first widely used standardized temperature scale) Fahrenheit hydrometer
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Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (/ˈfærənˌhaɪt/; German: [ˈfaːʀənhait]; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a Dutch-German-Polish physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker. A pioneer of exact thermometry, he is best known for inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer (first practical, accurate thermometer) and for proposing the Fahrenheit scale (first standardized temperature scale to be widely used).

Fahrenheit was born in the city of Danzig (Gdańsk), Pomeranian Voivodeship in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but lived most of his life in the Dutch Republic. The Fahrenheits were a German Hanse merchant family who had lived in several Hanseatic cities. Fahrenheit's great-grandfather had lived in , and research suggests that the Fahrenheit family originated in Hildesheim. Daniel's grandfather moved from Kneiphof in Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad) to Danzig and settled there as a merchant in 1650. His son, Daniel Fahrenheit (the father of the subject of this article), married Concordia Schumann, daughter of a well-known Danzig business family. Daniel was the eldest of the five Fahrenheit children (two sons, three daughters) who survived childhood. His sister, Virginia Elizabeth Fahrenheit, married Benjamin Ephraim Krueger of an aristocratic family from Danzig.