Hippias

Hippias of Elis

Born: about 460 BC in Elis, Peloponnese, Greece
Died: about 400 BC

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Hippias was a statesman and philosopher who travelled from place to place taking money for his services. He lectured on poetry, grammar, history, politics, archaeology, mathematics and astronomy. Plato describes him as a vain man being both arrogant and boastful. He had a wide but superficial knowledge.

Hippias's only contribution to mathematics seems to be the quadratrix which may have been used by him for trisecting an angle and squaring the circle. The curve may be used for dividing an angle into any number of equal parts.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Show me the quadratrix

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. T L Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics I (Oxford, 1921), 225-230.
  4. M Cantor, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik I (Leipzig, 1908), 193-197. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996