He visited England in 1724 and was the same year elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

From 1718 onwards, he lectured in chemistry in Amsterdam.

In 1717, Fahrenheit settled in The Hague as a glassblower, making barometers, altimeters, and thermometers.

During that time, Fahrenheit met or was in contact with Ole Rømer, Christian Wolff, and Gottfried Leibniz. From 1717, he traveled to Berlin, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Copenhagen, and also to his hometown, where his brother still lived. However, Fahrenheit's interest in natural science led him to begin studies and experimentation in that field. ĭaniel Gabriel began training as a merchant in Amsterdam after his parents died on 14 August 1701 from eating poisonous mushrooms. His sister, Virginia Elisabeth Fahrenheit, married Benjamin Krüger and was the mother of Benjamin Ephraim Krüger, a clergyman and playwright. Daniel was the eldest of the five Fahrenheit children (two sons, three daughters) who survived childhood. His son, Daniel Fahrenheit (the father of Daniel Gabriel), married Concordia Schumann, daughter of a well-known Danzig business family. Daniel's grandfather moved from Kneiphof in Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad) to Danzig and settled there as a merchant in 1650. Fahrenheit's great-grandfather had lived in Rostock, and research suggests that the Fahrenheit family originated in Hildesheim. The Fahrenheits were a German Hanse merchant family who had lived in several Hanseatic cities. Biographyįahrenheit was born in Danzig (Gdańsk), then in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but lived most of his life in the Dutch Republic. From the early 1710s until the beginnings of the electronic era, mercury-in-glass thermometers were among the most reliable and accurate thermometers ever invented. In other words, Fahrenheit's inventions ushered in the first revolution in the history of thermometry (branch of physics concerned with methods of temperature measurement). He later moved to the Dutch Republic at age 15, where he spent the rest of his life (1701–1736) and was one of the notable figures in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology.Ī pioneer of exact thermometry, he helped lay the foundations for the era of precision thermometry by inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer (first widely used, practical, accurate thermometer) and Fahrenheit scale (first standardized temperature scale to be widely used). Fahrenheit was born in Danzig (Gdańsk), then a predominantly German-speaking city in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS ( / ˈ f ær ə n h aɪ t/ German: – 16 September 1736) was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker.

Fahrenheit's books