Medical thermometer Bahamas, Belize, and the Cayman Islands. Prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist Christiaan Huygens created a clinical thermometer in 1665, to which he added an early form of the centigrade scale by setting the scale to the freezing and boiling points of water. By 1742 Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius created the Celsius temperature scale that was the reverse of the modern scale, in that "0" was the boiling point of water, while "100" was freezing. It would later be reversed by Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) in 1744. Working independently of Celsius, the Lyonnais physicist Jean-Pierre Christin, permanent secretary of
Anders Sandøe Ørsted Anders Sandøe Ørsted Anders Sandøe Ørsted (21 December 1778, Rudkøbing – 1 May 1860) was a Danish lawyer, politician and jurist. He served as the Prime Minister of Denmark in 1853–1854. He studied philosophy and law at Copenhagen and was admitted to the bar in 1799. He became a noted jurist. An early case overseen by him was that of Hans Jonatan, an escaped slave, which was (at least viewed retrospectively) a major test case in Danish law on slavery; Anders condemned Hans to be returned to the West Indies, where he had been purchased (Hof-og Stadsret: "Generalmajorinde Henriette de