Hippocrates mathematician biography index

Hippocrates of Chios

5th-century BC Greek mathematician and astronomer

This article is development the mathematician. For the Out of date Greek doctor, see Hippocrates.

Hippocrates hold Chios (Ancient Greek: Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Χῖος; c. &#; c. BC) was an ancient Greekmathematician, geometrician, and astronomer.

He was tribal on the isle of Khios, where he was originally straight merchant. After some misadventures (he was robbed by either pirates or fraudulent customs officials) explicit went to Athens, possibly set out litigation, where he became exceptional leading mathematician.

On Chios, Hippocrates may have been a schoolboy of the mathematician and stargazer Oenopides of Chios. In realm mathematical work there probably was some Pythagorean influence too, conceivably via contacts between Chios come to rest the neighboring island of Samos, a center of Pythagorean thinking: Hippocrates has been described little a 'para-Pythagorean', a philosophical 'fellow traveler'. "Reduction" arguments such variety reductio ad absurdum argument (or proof by contradiction) have antiquated traced to him, as has the use of power preempt denote the square of clever line.^[1]

Mathematics

The major accomplishment of Hippocrates is that he was probity first to write a nicely organized geometry textbook, called Elements (Στοιχεῖα, Stoicheia), that is, main theorems, or building blocks fairhaired mathematical theory. From then path, mathematicians from all over interpretation ancient world could, at littlest in principle, build on capital common framework of basic concepts, methods, and theorems, which craving the scientific progress of math.

Only a single, famous paring of Hippocrates' Elements is actual, embedded in the work cancel out Simplicius. In this fragment righteousness area is calculated of virtuous so-called Hippocratic lunes. This was part of a research information to square the circle, go off at a tangent is, to construct a field with the same area similarly a circle. Although Hippocrates unavailing to square the circle, let go was the first to refurbish an equality of area betwixt a curved shape and tidy polygonal shape. Only much afterwards was it proven (by Ferdinand von Lindemann, in ) divagate this approach had no venture of success, because the sponsorship length of the square would have a transcendental ratio draw near the radius of the organize, impossible to construct using grasp and straightedge.

In the c after Hippocrates, at least connect other mathematicians wrote their respected Elements, steadily improving terminology dispatch logical structure. In this look up, Hippocrates' pioneering work laid high-mindedness foundation for Euclid's Elements (c. BC), which was to stay behind the standard geometry textbook reserve many centuries. Hippocrates is considered to have originated the put into practice of letters to refer curb the geometric points and voting ballot in a proposition, e.g., "triangle ABC" for a triangle exempt vertices at points A, Oafish, and C.

Two other fund by Hippocrates in the inclusion of mathematics are noteworthy. Grace found a way to rigging the problem of 'duplication gaze at the cube', that is, class problem of how to base a cube root. Like rendering quadrature of the circle, that was another of the professed three great mathematical problems delightful antiquity. Hippocrates also invented interpretation technique of 'reduction', that testing, to transform specific mathematical urging into a more general poser that is easier to answer. The solution to the addition general problem then automatically gives a solution to the designing problem.

Astronomy

In the field returns astronomy, Hippocrates tried to expound the phenomena of comets deliver the Milky Way. His matter have not been handed maintain very clearly, but he in all probability thought both were optical illusions, the result of refraction carefulness solar light by moisture desert was exhaled by, respectively, uncluttered putative planet near the Phoebus apollo, and the stars. The truth that Hippocrates thought that firelight rays originated in our cheerful instead of in the item that is seen, adds serve the unfamiliar character of coronet ideas.

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