Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
Born	May 12, 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, Netherlands
Fields	Physics, thermometry
Known for	Fahrenheit temperature scale, Fahrenheit hydrometer
Signature

Fahrenheit's birthplace in Gdańsk

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit^[1] (24 May 1686^[2] – 16 September 1736) was a German^[3][4] physicist, engineer, and glass blower who is best known for inventing the alcohol thermometer (1709) and the mercury thermometer (1714), and for developing a temperature scale now named after him.^[3]

Biography

Fahrenheit was born in 1686 in Danzig (Gdańsk), 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 Rostock, and research suggests that the Fahrenheit family originated in Hildesheim.^[5] Daniel's grandfather moved from Kneiphof in Königsberg (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 Danzig family.^[6]

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit began training as a merchant in Amsterdam after his parents died on August 14, 1701 from eating poisonous mushrooms. However, Fahrenheit's interest in natural science led him to begin studies and experimentation in that field. From 1717, he traveled to Berlin, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Copenhagen, and also to his hometown, where his brother still lived. During that time, Fahrenheit met or was in contact with Ole Rømer, Christian Wolff, and Gottfried Leibniz. In 1717, Fahrenheit settled in The Hague as a glassblower, making barometers, altimeters, and thermometers. From 1718 onwards, he lectured in chemistry in Amsterdam. He visited England in 1724 and was the same year elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.^[7] Fahrenheit died in The Hague and was buried there at the Kloosterkerk (Cloister Church).

Fahrenheit scale

The Celsius and Fahrenheit scales

Main article: Fahrenheit

According to Fahrenheit's 1724 article,^[8][9] he determined his scale by reference to three fixed points of temperature. The lowest temperature was achieved by preparing a frigorific mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride (a salt), and waiting for it to reach equilibrium. The thermometer then was placed into the mixture and the liquid in the thermometer allowed to descend to its lowest point. The thermometer's reading there was taken as 0 °F. The second reference point was selected as the reading of the thermometer when it was placed in still water when ice was just forming on the surface.^[10] This was assigned as 32 °F. The third calibration point, taken as 96 °F, was selected as the thermometer's reading when the instrument was placed under the arm or in the mouth.

Fahrenheit noted that mercury boils around 600 degrees on this temperature scale. Work by others showed that water boils about 180 degrees above its freezing point. The Fahrenheit scale later was redefined to make the freezing-to-boiling interval exactly 180 degrees,^[8] a convenient value as 180 is a highly composite number, meaning that it is evenly divisible into many fractions. It is because of the scale's redefinition that normal body temperature today is taken as 98.6 degrees, whereas it was 96 degrees on Fahrenheit's original scale.^[11]

Until the switch to the Celsius scale, the Fahrenheit scale was widely used in Europe^{[citation needed]}. It is still used for everyday temperature measurements by the general population in the United States^[12] and Belize and, less so, in the UK and Canada.

See also

• Fahrenheit hydrometer

References

1. ^ He signed as D. G. Fahrenheit in a 1736 letter
2. ^ "24. Mai 1686" in the modern Gregorian calendar, which Danzig had already adopted in 1583, according to a speech held on 26 May 1886 by Prof. Albert Momber at the Naturforschende Gesellschaft zu Danzig, printed in Altpreußische Monatsschrift 1887, p. 143 [1]
3. ^ ^{a b} Encyclopedia Britannica "Science & Technology: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit" [2]
4. ^ Encyclopedia of World Biography "Gabriel Fahrenheit"
5. ^ Kant, Horst (1984). G. D. Fahrenheit / R. -A. F. de Réaumur / A. Celsius. B. G. Teubner. http://books.google.com/?id=XYKtGQAACAAJ. Retrieved 2008-06-14. 
6. ^ See the Fahrenheit and Krueger genealogies.
7. ^ The Royal Society Archive catalogue
8. ^ ^{a b} "Fahrenheit temperature scale". Sizes, Inc. 2006-12-10. http://www.sizes.com/units/temperature_Fahrenheit.htm. Retrieved 2008-05-09. 
9. ^ Fahrenheit describes, in Latin, these numerical choices in the following paper: Fahrenheit, D. G. (1724). "Experimenta et Observationes de Congelatione aquae in vacuo factae". Philosophical Transactions (London) 33 (381–391): 78. doi:10.1098/rstl.1724.0016. 
10. ^ Heath, Jonathan. "Why does the Fahrenheit scale use 32 degrees as a freezing point?". PhysLink. http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae64.cfm?CFID=21412834&CFTOKEN=55577927. Retrieved 2008-05-09. 
11. ^ Elert, Glenn; Forsberg, C; Wahren, LK (2002). "Temperature of a Healthy Human (Body Temperature)". Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences 16 (2): 122–8. doi:10.1046/j.1471-6712.2002.00069.x. PMID 12000664. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/LenaWong.shtml. Retrieved 04-12-2008. 
12. ^ For an early attempt to replace the Fahrenheit scale in the United States, see Johnson, Albert (1916). Abolish the Fahrenheit Thermometer. Washington, DC: G.P.O.. http://books.google.com/?id=Bv5gc38ezBAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Abolish+the+Fahrenheit+Thermometer. 

Further reading

Memorial plaque at Fahrenheit's burial site in The Hague.

• Bolton, Henry Carrington (1900). Evolution of the Thermometer, 1592-1743. Easton, Pennsylvania: The Chemical Publishing Company. pp. 66 – 79. http://books.google.com/?id=7A9JAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=evolution+thermometer#PPA1,M2. 
• Fahrenheit, D. G. (1724). "Experimenta circa gradum caloris liquorum nonnullorum ebullientium instituta (Experiments done on the degree of heat of a few boiling liquids)". Philosophical Transactions (London) 33: 1. http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/fahrenheit.html. 
• Fahrenheit, D. G. (1724). "Experimenta et Observationes de Congelatione aquae in vacuo factae". Philosophical Transactions (London) 33 (381–391): 78. doi:10.1098/rstl.1724.0016.  (Latin)
• Klemm, Friedrich: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 4. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, p. 746 f. (German)
• Kops, J (1976). "Who was G.D. Fahrenheit?". Zdravotnická pracovnice 26 (2): pp. 118–9. 1976 Feb. PMID 775856.  (Czech)
• Lommel (1877) (in German). "Fahrenheit, Gabriel Daniel". In Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). 6. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. p. 535–535.
• Friedrich Klemm: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 4. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, p. 746 f. (German)
• Middleton, W. E. Knowles (1966). A History of the Thermometer and its Use in Meteorology. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Press. 
• Sorokina, T S (1986). "Creators of medical thermometry (on the 300th anniversary of the birth of Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit--24 May 1686 and on the 350th anniversary of the death of Santorio Santorio--22 February 1636)". Klinicheskaia meditsina 64 (10): pp. 147–51. 1986 Oct. PMID 3543477.  (Russian)
• Van Der Star, P., ed (1984). Fahrenheit's Letters to Leibniz and Boerhaave. Editions Rodopi. 

External links

• Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• Letter from Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (scan) to Carl Linnaeus, 7 May 1736 n.s., [3] (German)
• Senese, Fred (2005). "Why isn't 0°F the lowest possible temperature for a salt/ice/water mixture?". http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/zero-fahrenheit.shtml. 
• Fahrenheit's papers in the Royal Society Publishing (Latin)

Persondata
Name	Fahrenheit, Daniel Gabriel
Alternative names
Short description	Physicist
Date of birth	24 May 1686
Place of birth	Gdansk
Date of death	16 September 1736
Place of death	The Hague, Netherlands