Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

German physicist, b. 24 May 1686 (Gdánsk, Poland), d. 16 September 1736 (The Hague, Netherlands).

Fahrenheit spent most of his life in the Netherlands studying physics and manufacturing precision meteorological instruments. He developed the alcohol thermometer in 1709 and the mercury thermometer in 1714 and defined the Fahrenheit temperature scale. His scale is still used in the USA.

Fahrenheit discovered that the boiling point of water depends on the atmospheric pressure and that under certain conditions water can remain liquid below its freezing point.

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