Celsius

   , CELSIUS SCALE

   The centigrade thermometer has two constant degrees, a freezing point of water, namely 0°, and its boiling point, 100°. It is sometimes called the Celsius scale in honor of the person who simplified the Fahrenheit scale, which has a freezing point of 32° and a boiling point of 212°. The centigrade temperature scale (its name was changed to Celsius in 1948 by a world conference on weights and measures) was an invention of Anders Celsius (1701-1744), born in Uppsala, Sweden. The son of an astronomy professor, young Celsius, after teaching mathematics, followed in his father's footsteps: He became a professor of astronomy at the University of Uppsala, where he devised the scale that bears his name. Celsius published a collection of 316 observations of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, and in 1744 built the Uppsala Observatory. He subsequently was able to verify through the measurement of a meridian in Lapland that Newton's hypothesis that the poles were somewhat flattened was correct.

   Celsius first described the Celsius scale in a paper he read before the Swedish Academy of Science in 1742. Today the mercury thermometer patterned on this thermometric scale is the favored method in Europe of determining meterological temperature as well as the temperature of human beings.

   Centigrade temperature can be converted to Fahrenheit by multiplying the centigrade reading by 1.8 and adding 32 to the result.