Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit divisible into many fractions. It is because of the scale's redefinition that normal body temperature today is taken as 98.6 degrees, whereas it was 96 degrees on Fahrenheit's original scale. The Fahrenheit scale was the primary temperature standard for climatic, industrial and medical purposes in English-speaking countries until the 1970s, nowadays replaced by the Celsius scale long used in the rest of the world. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS (; ; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a Dutch-German-Polish physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker. Fahrenheit was born in Danzig/Gdańsk, a predominantly German-speaking Hanseatic city in
Medical thermometer the "Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Lyon", developed a similar scale in which "0" represented the freezing point of water and "100" represented boiling. On 19 May 1743 he published the design of a mercury thermometer, the "Thermometer of Lyon" built by the craftsman Pierre Casati that used this scale. The medical thermometer was used by Dutch chemist and physician Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738), as well as his notable students Gerard van Swieten (1700–72) and Anton de Haen (1704–76). It was also utilized around the same time by Scottish physician George Martine (1700–1741). De Haen made particular strides in