Ole Roemer was a Danish man, who was named the 2nd chief of police for Copenhagen – and promptly fired all the police because morale was low. Roemer also planned new pavements for the streets, worked to obtain new equipment for the fire department and planned new pavements.
But that was Roemer’s second career. His first occupation was being a scientist. After some time as the tutor to the French king’s heir, Roemer became a professor of astronomy at the University of Copenhagen in 1681. When attempting to study the orbit of Io, one of Jupiter’s larger moons, he discovered that the length of Io’s orbit differed depending on how close the Earth was to the sun. Closer to the sun, and Io’s orbit shortened. Further from the sun, and Io’s orbit lengthened. Roemer put together the facts and discovered that light has a speed. He even did a pretty decent calculation for how fast light travels!
Roemer also developed a temperature scale that divided the measurements between freezing water and boiling water into 60 degrees. Along the way, he invented the mercury thermometer, and in 1708 Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit visited Roemer to learn how Roemer constructed thermometers before creating Fahrenheit own and the Fahrenheit scale.
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