ABSTRACT
Anders Celsius (1701–1744) of Uppsala, Sweden is not widely known for his astronomical accomplishments, which include brightness measurements of stars, systematic observations of the aurora borealis, and, in collaboration with others, a measurement of the length of a degree of latitude in Lapland. His chief claim to fame, however, resides in his convincing scientists to adopt a centigrade scale of temperature measurement. For his original version, he assigned o to the boiling point of water and 100 to the temperature of melting ice. A year later, Linn and Strömer reversed this designation and established the centigrade scale generally used for many years in scientific measurements. In 1969 the General Conference of Weights and Measures, choosing to honour scientists by attaching their names to units, decreed that the centigrade scale, as righted by Linn and Strömer, should be called the Celsius scale.
