Western Culture Global Presents

The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture
These individuals have most contributed to replacing ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization, disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty with abundance, and despair with happiness.



#80: Hipparchus (190 BC – 120 BC)

Hipparchus (190 BC – 120 BC) was a Greek astronomer, mathematician and geographer.

Hipparchus is arguably one of history's greatest astronomical observers and the greatest astronomer of the ancient world. He was likely the first Greek to create quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the sun and moon. He possessed a trigonometric table, and likely solved problems of spherical trigonometry.

Other achievements include the discovery of precession, the likely development of a reliable method of predicting solar eclipses, and the compilation of the first comprehensive star catalog.

Hipparchus had a powerful influence on Claudius Ptolemy (90-168) whose works centuries later had considerable impact on the development of Western culture.

Hipparchus was a brilliant, rational, passionate and innovative man who helped to establish for all future generations what a person of science can and should be



Go to #81: Beethoven


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