Skip to content
Vinony
English
EnglishBahasa IndonesiaDeutschEspañolFrançaisItalianoNederlandsPolskiPortuguêsSvenskaTiếng ViệtTürkçeРусскийالعربيةفارسیहिन्दीไทย한국어中文日本語
Hipparchus

File:Head_of_Hipparchus_(cropped).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ159905· pop 84· linked from 449 articles

Hipparchus

Sign in to save

Also known as Hipparchus of Nicaea, Hipparchus of Rhodes

Hipparchus (; , ;  BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, Bithynia, and probably died on the island of Rhodes, Greece. He is known to have been a working astronomer between 162 and 127 BC.

AI overview

Hipparchus was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician who lived between 162 and 127 BC and is credited with founding trigonometry. He is best remembered for discovering the precession of the equinoxes, a finding that fundamentally changed our understanding of how Earth's orientation changes over time.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Key facts

Person.name
Hipparchus
Person.image
Head of Hipparchus (cropped).jpg
Person.caption
Illustration based on a 19th century engraved amethyst from the Poniatowski gem collection
Person.birth_date
 BC
Person.birth_place
Nicaea, Kingdom of Bithynia(modern-day İznik, Bursa, Turkey)
Person.death_date
 BC (around age 70)
Person.death_place
Rhodes, Roman Republic(modern-day Greece)

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Instance of
human
Gender
male
Citizenship
Kingdom of Pergamon
Place of birth
Nicaea
Place of death
Rhodes
Occupation
geographer
Languages spoken
Ancient Greek
Field of work
astronomy
Image
Head of Hipparchus (cropped).jpg
Show 9 more facts
Commons category
Hipparchus
date of birth
0190-00-00
date of death
0120-00-00
described by source
Pauly–Wissowa
birth name
Ἵππαρχος
writing language
Ancient Greek
on focus list of Wikimedia project
Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
name in native language
Hipparchus
maintained by WikiProject
WikiProject Mathematics
Sources (4)

via Wikidata · CC0

~48 min read

Encyclopedic overview

28 sections
Contents
  • Life and work
  • Babylonian sources
  • Geometry, trigonometry and other mathematical techniques
  • Lunar and solar theory
  • Motion of the Moon
  • Orbit of the Moon
  • Apparent motion of the Sun
  • Orbit of the Sun
  • Distance, parallax, size of the Moon and the Sun
  • Eclipses
  • Astronomical instruments and astrometry
  • Star catalog
  • Stellar magnitude
  • Coordinate system
  • Celestial globe
  • Arguments for and against Hipparchus's star catalog in the Almagest
  • Precession of the equinoxes (146–127 BC)
  • Geography
  • Other work
  • Modern speculation
  • Legacy
  • Translations
  • See also
  • Notes
  • References
  • Works cited
  • Further reading
  • External links

Hipparchus (; , ;  BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, Bithynia, and probably died on the island of Rhodes, Greece. He is known to have been a working astronomer between 162 and 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 (fifth century BC), Timocharis, Aristyllus, Aristarchus of Samos, and Eratosthenes, among others.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Hipparchus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (25)

Available in 77 languages

Show 58 more

via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0