Anders Celsius

@Mathematicians, Birthday and Family

Anders Celsius was a Swedish astronomer and physicist who proposed the Celsius temperature scale and founded the Uppsala Observatory

Nov 27, 1701

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Biography

Personal Details

  • Birthday: November 27, 1701
  • Died on: April 25, 1744
  • Nationality: Swedish
  • Famous: Scientists, Mathematicians, Astronomers, Physicists
  • Universities:
    • Uppsala University
  • Cause of death: Tuberculosis
  • Birth Place: Uppsala

Anders Celsius born at

Uppsala

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Birth Place

He died of tuberculosis on April 25, 1744, in Uppsala, Sweden, at the age of 42. He was buried in the Gamla Uppsala Kyrkogård, Uppsala, Sweden.

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Personal Life

He was born on November 27, 1701, in Uppsala, Sweden, to Nils Celsius, an astronomy professor at the Uppsala University.

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Childhood & Early Life

He was the paternal grandson of the mathematician, Magnus Celsius, and the maternal grandson of astronomer, Anders Spole.

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Childhood & Early Life

He was a talented mathematician from an early age and received his education from the Uppsala University. He studied astronomy, mathematics, and experimental physics and eventually decided to pursue a career in science.

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Childhood & Early Life

After completing his graduation, he was appointed as the secretary of the ‘Royal Society of Sciences’ in Uppsala. In 1730, he became a professor of astronomy at Uppsala University, a post he served until 1744.

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Career

His earliest research concerned the ‘aurora borealis’, an unusual activity in which spectacular illumination of the night sky occurs due to the northern lights. He observed the variations of a compass needle and found that with stronger auroral activity, there occurred large deflections in the compass.

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Career

From 1732 to 1736, he traveled extensively to other countries to expand his knowledge as an astronomer, and also visited observatories in Berlin and Nuremburg to conduct extensive research.

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Career

In 1733, he published a collection of 316 observations of the aurora borealis, made by him and others scientists from 1716 to 1732.

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Career

He traveled to Italy, France and Germany and visited many European observatories. In 1736, he participated in the ‘Lapland expedition’ organized by ‘French Academy of Sciences’. The aim of the expedition was to measure a meridian in the north in the hope of verifying the Newtonian theory that the earth is flattened at the poles.

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Career

He was the first person who suggested a connection between the aurora borealis and changes in the Earth's magnetic field.

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Major Works

He advocated the measurement of an arc of a meridian in Lapland and later took part in an expedition which helped in verification of Newton’s theory that the Earth is flattened at the poles.

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Major Works

He was the first to perform and publish careful experiments seeking to define an international temperature scale based on scientific grounds. In 1742, he proposed a temperature scale based on the boiling and freezing points of water, which was the reverse of the scale now known by the name ‘Celsius’.

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Major Works