Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit 1686-1736 German-Dutch Instrument Maker Daniel Fahrenheit is famous for the temperature scale that bears his name and for developing the first mercury thermometer. He also established quantitatively that boiling-point temperatures vary with pressure, and he discovered supercooling of water.

“I read … that the celebrated Amontons, using a thermometer of his own invention, had discovered that water boils at a fixed degree of heat. I was at once inflamed with a great desire to make for myself a thermometer of the same sort, so that I might with my own eyes perceive this beautiful phenomenon of nature.”

-Gabriel Fahrenheit