Meteorology known as the first "anemometer". In 1607, Galileo Galilei constructed a thermoscope. In 1611, Johannes Kepler wrote the first scientific treatise on snow crystals: "Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula (A New Year's Gift of Hexagonal Snow)". In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli invented the mercury barometer. In 1662, Sir Christopher Wren invented the mechanical, self-emptying, tipping bucket rain gauge. In 1714, Gabriel Fahrenheit created a reliable scale for measuring temperature with a mercury-type thermometer. In 1742, Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, proposed the "centigrade" temperature scale, the predecessor of the current Celsius scale. In 1783, the first hair hygrometer was demonstrated by
Uppsala University as leader of the ecumenical movement. The university became prominent in the sciences in the 18th century with names such as the physician and botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the father of biological and mineralogical taxonomy, and his numerous important pupils, the physicist and astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744), inventor of the Celsius scale the predecessor of the Celsius scale, and the chemist Torbern Bergman (1735–1784). Another scientist from this era is Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), better remembered today as a religious mystic. Several of the elements were discovered by Uppsala scientists during this period or later. Jöns Jakob Berzelius, one of the