Hot or cold, Anders?

27 November 2013

The Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius was born in Uppsala on this day in 1701. His family originated from Ovanåker in the province of Hälsingland. As the son of an astronomy professor, Nils Celsius, and the grandson of the mathematician, Magnus Celsius, and the astronomer, Anders Spole, Celsius chose a career in science.

He was a talented mathematician from an early age. Anders Celsius studied at Uppsala University, where his father was a teacher, and in 1730 he too became a Professor of astronomy there.

He is chiefly associated in the wider world with the temperature scale that bears his name. The original Celsius scale, first described by him in 1742, fixed the melting point of ice at 100°C and the boiling point of water at 0°C. The inverted version, also known as the centigrade scale, was adopted a few years after his death in 1744.

Celsius died of tuberculosis and is buried beneath the church floor, next to his grandfather, in Uppsala Kommun, Uppsala Lan, Sweden. His gravestone has been photographed and uploaded to the Find A Grave website.

But my question to you is: how many countries, outside of Scandinavia, have historically had Celsius name bearers residing within their boundaries?

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