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Anders Celsius (1701-1744) was a Swedish astronomy professor and physicist, perhaps most famous for his temperature scale. He was also a writer of poetry and popular science. One of the major questions in that time was what shape the Earth had. Newton et al had proposed that the Earth was not completely spheric, but rather flattened at the poles. Cartographic measuring in France suggested that it was the other way around: the Earth was elongated at the poles. In 1735, one expedition sailed to Ecuador in South America, and another expedition, led by Pierre Loius Moreau de Maupertuis, to Torneå in northern Sweden. Celsius was the only professional astronomer on that expedition. Their measurements seemed to indicate that the Earth actually was flattened at the poles. Celsius was not only an astronomer, but also a physicist. He and his assistant Olof Hiortner discovered that aurora borealis influence compass needles. However, the thing that made him famous is his temperature scale, which he defined as the boiling point of water as a certain atmospheric pressure was 0 degrees, and the melting point of ice was 100 degrees. The scale was turned around after his death, either by his pupil Mårten Strömer, or by the instrument maker Daniel Ekström. The upturned scale was accepted as standard in Sweden and soon thereafter in most other countries except Great Britain. The name "centigrades" for the Celsius temperature scale became obsolete when the SI system was declared international standard in 1954-1960. The correct name is "degrees Celsius." Anders Celsius died in 1744, just 42 years old, by phthisis. He had by then started many research projects, but finished few of them. Among his papers were found the draft to a science fiction novel, situated partly on Sirius.