Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit | |
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Daniel Fahrenheit.
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Born | 24 May 1686 (in old British sources as 14 May Old Style) Danzig/Gdańsk, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth |
Died | 16 September 1736 The Hague, Dutch Republic |
(aged 50)
Nationality | Polish, Dutch |
Fields | Physics, thermometry |
Known for | Fahrenheit temperature scale, Fahrenheit hydrometer, first mercury-in-glass thermometer |
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Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (/ˈfærənˌhaɪt/; German: [ˈfaːʀənhait]; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a Dutch-German-Polish physicist, engineer, and glass blower who is best known for inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer (1714), and for developing a temperature scale now named after him.
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.