Olof Celsius (the elder) (19 July 1670 – 24 June 1756) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

and clergyman, He was a professor at

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in opera ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. Celsius was a mentor of the botanist and scientist

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

. Celsius wrote his most famous book on biblical plants, ''Hierobotanicon'', in 1745–47. Celsius was also a prominent

runologist Runology is the study of the Runic alphabets, Runic inscriptions and their history. Runology forms a specialized branch of Germanic linguistics. History Runology was initiated by Johannes Bureus (1568–1652), who was very interested in the lingu ...

. Olof Celsius's father was the mathematician

Magnus Celsius Magnus Celsius (16 January 1621 – 5 May 1679) was a Swedish astronomer and mathematician, decipherer of the staveless runes. His grandson was Anders Celsius. He was the father of Olof Celsius Olof Celsius (the elder) (19 July 1670 – 24 June ...

and his nephew

Anders Celsius Anders Celsius (; 27 November 170125 April 1744) was a Swedish astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He was professor of astronomy at Uppsala University from 1730 to 1744, but traveled from 1732 to 1735 visiting notable observatories in Germ ...

(son of his brother and astronomy professor Nils Celsius) was an astronomer who invented a temperature scale where 100 originally represented the freezing point of water and 0 represented the boiling point.

Jean-Pierre Christin Jean-Pierre Christin (31 May 1683 – 19 January 1755) was a French physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and musician. His proposal in 1743 to reverse the Celsius thermometer scale (from water boiling at 0 degrees and ice melting at 100 degre ...

, in 1744 reversed the scale to create the centigrade scale, renamed in 1948 to the

Celsius The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The ...

scale in use today. Noted Swedish dramatic poet and actor Johan Celsius was also his brother.https://www.myheritage.com/names/johan_celsius Olof Celsius was made a member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special ...

in 1739.

References

18th-century Swedish botanists Swedish philologists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1670 births 1756 deaths {{Sweden-botanist-stub