Hippocrates of Chios

Who was Hippocrates of Chios?

Hippocrates of Chios was an ancient Greek mathematician, and astronomer, who lived c. 470 – c. 410 BCE.

He was born on the isle of Chios, where he originally was a merchant. After some misadventures he went to Athens, possibly for litigation. There he grew into 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 neighbouring island of Samos, a center of Pythagorean thinking: Hippocrates has been described as a 'para-Pythagorean', a philosophical 'fellow traveler'. The Reductio ad absurdum argument has been traced to him.