CalendarZ

  1. Home
  2. On This Day
  3. January
  4. 19
  5. Jean-Pierre Christin

Deaths on January 19

Jean-Pierre Christin
1755Jan, 19

Jean-Pierre Christin

Jean-Pierre Christin, French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer (b. 1683)
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 degrees, to where zero represented the freezing point of water and 100 represented the boiling point of water) was widely accepted and is still in use today.Christin was born in Lyon. He was a founding member of the Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Lyon and served as its Permanent Secretary from 1713 until 1755. His thermometer was known in France before the Revolution as the thermometer of Lyon. One of these thermometers was kept at the Science Museum in London.

References

Choose Another Date

Events on 1755

  • 15Apr

    A Dictionary of the English Language

    Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London.
  • 9Jul

    Battle of the Monongahela

    The Braddock Expedition is soundly defeated by a smaller French and Native American force in its attempt to capture Fort Duquesne in what is now downtown Pittsburgh.
  • 25Jul

    Expulsion of the Acadians

    British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council order the deportation of the Acadians.
  • 10Aug

    Expulsion of the Acadians

    Under the orders of Charles Lawrence, the British Army begins to forcibly deport the Acadians from Nova Scotia to the Thirteen Colonies.
  • 1Nov

    1755 Lisbon earthquake

    In Portugal, Lisbon is totally devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between 60,000 and 90,000 people.