James Six

James Six FRS (1731 – 25 August 1793) was a British scientist born in Canterbury. He is noted for his invention, in 1780, of Six's thermometer, commonly known as the maximum- minimum thermometer. This device is still in common use today and widely sold in garden centres.

Life Six was from a family of Huguenot refugees from the Continent who had settled in England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and who had worked as silk weavers for generations. James Six himself had trained in the family business, but by his time this was in decline because of cheap imported silks from India and Persia.

He became interested in natural philosophy, and devoted himself to astronomy and meteorology. In 1782 The Royal Society of London published an account of the thermometer