Etymology

degree Rankine

Today it means: A unit of thermodynamic temperature equal to 5/9 kelvin, and derived by offsetting the Fahrenheit scale to absolute zero. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

Named after the Glasgow University engineer and physicist William John Macquorn Rankine, who proposed this scale in 1859.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.