Hippocrates of Chios

This article is about the mathematician. For the Ancient Greek doctor, see Hippocrates.
The Lune of Hippocrates. Partial solution of the "Squaring the circle" task, suggested by Hippocrates. The area of the shaded figure is equal to the area of the triangle ABC. This is not a complete solution of the task (the complete solution is proven to be impossible with compass and straightedge).

Hippocrates of Chios (‹See Tfd›Greek: Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Χῖος; c. 470 – c. 421 BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician, geometer, and astronomer.

He was born on the isle of Chios, where he was originally a merchant. After some misadventures (he was robbed by either pirates or fraudulent customs officials) he went to Athens, possibly for litigation, where he became a leading mathematician.

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

  1. ^ W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics (1888) p. 36.