Hipparchus

Hipparchus
aliases
Hipparchus of Nicaea; ππαρχος, Hipparkhos
A Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry but is most famous for his incidental discovery of precession of the equinoxes.

Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, Bithynia (now İznik, Turkey), and probably died on the island of Rhodes. He is known to have been a working astronomer at least from 162 to 127 bc. Hipparchus is considered the greatest ancient astronomical observer and, by some, the greatest overall astronomer of antiquity. He was the first whose quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive. For this he certainly made use of the observations and perhaps the mathematical techniques accumulated over centuries by the Babylonians and by Meton of Athens (5th century bc), Timocharis, Aristyllus, Aristarchus of Samos and Eratosthenes, among others. He developed trigonometry and constructed trigonometric tables, and he solved several problems of spherical trigonometry. With his solar and lunar theories and his…more

No photos have been uploaded yet.

Books with Hipparchus

The Story of Mathematics

by
3.76 avg rating — 162 ratings — published 2008
add/edit characters
Rate this book
Clear rating
The Great Mathematicians: U...

by
3.61 avg rating — 109 ratings — published 2011
add/edit characters
Rate this book
Clear rating

More People