Temperature > 12 - Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

He was a German physicist. He invented the mercury expansion thermometer and the Fahrenheit scale. The technique he used to create the mercury thermometer is the same one used today. The creation of the thermometer is attributed to Galileo, although many others were created, but the first to overcome all the difficulties of precision was the invention of Fahrenheit.

He was born on May 24, 1686, in the German city of Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland. Son of the merchant Daniel Fahrenheit and Concordia Fahrenheit, he was the youngest of the couple's five children. He was educated to work in commerce and traveled through Great Britain and the Netherlands.

He studied and worked in Amsterdam, where his interest in chemistry awoke. He met the Dutch physicist Willen Jacob's Gravesande and under his guidance he abandoned business and devoted himself to experimental physics, especially the manufacture of thermometers, barometers, hygrometers and aerometers, perfecting manufacturing techniques to obtain more accurate readings.

Fahrenheit invented the alcohol thermometer in 1709, and in 1714 he created the mercury thermometer in 1724 and created the Fahrenheit scale, whose symbol is ºF. In this new uniform scale for reading temperature, the melting point of water is 32 ºF and the boiling point is 212 ºF. A difference of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit is equivalent to 1ºC.

Fahrenheit became a notable scientist and in 1724 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He died of mercury poisoning on September 16, 1736, in The Hague.