Synopsis

Anders Celsius was born on November 27, 1701 in Uppsala, Sweden. He was a Swedish astronomer and physicist who taught at the University of Uppsala. He published a collection of observations of the aurora borealis and built the Uppsala Observatory. He also invented the Celsius (or centigrade) thermometer scale. Though he originally set the scale with a boiling point of 0° and a freezing point of 100°, the inverted form of the scale, setting the freezing point of water at 0° and the boiling point at 100° is considered the standard among scientific work today. Another scale, developed by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, is commonly used in the United States. Celsius died in 1744 at the age of 42.