Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was a German, born in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), who spent most of his life in Holland and England. He invented a thermometer (using mercury instead of alcohol) with a new scale, named after him. The Fahrenheit scale has the freezing-point of water marked at 32 degrees and the boiling point at 212.
Fahrenheit's scale was the one most used in Britain and other English-speaking countries and the USA for many years, but by and large, this has now been superseded by the centigrade scale. The word Fahrenheit however is firmly established as part of the English language.
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