HIPPARCHUS (ft. 146-126 B.c.), Greek astronomer, was born at Nicaea in Bithynia early in the 2nd century B.C. He observed in the island of Rhodes probably from 161, and made the capital discovery of the precession of the equinoxes in 13o. (See ASTRONOMY : History.) Hipparchus founded trigonometry, invented the method of fixing terrestrial positions by circles of latitude and longitude, and catalogued more than i,000 stars. None of his many works has survived except a Commentary on the Phaenomena of Aratus and Eudoxus, published by P. Victorius at Florence in 1567, and included by D. Petavius in his Urano logium (Paris, 163o). A new edition was published by Carolus Manitius (Leipzig, 1894).
See J. A. Schmidt, Variorum phalosophicorum decas (Jena, 1691) ; J. F. Montulca, Histoire des mathematiques (1758) ; J. B. J. Delambre, Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne (1817) ; R. Grant, History of Physical Astronomy (1852) ; G. Cornewall Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients (1862) • M. Marie, Histoire des sciences (12 vols., 1883-88) ; R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie ; A. Berry, History of Astronomy (1891) ; P. Tannery, Recherches sur l'histoire de l'astronomie ancienne (1893) ; F. Boll, Sphaera (Leipzig, 1903).