Hipparchus

Hipparchus was a Greek mathematician who compiled an early example of trigonometric tables and gave methods for solving spherical triangles. He was born around 190 BC in Nicaea in Bithynia, now Iznik in north-western Turkey, and died around 120 BC, probably on Rhodes, which is why he is often called Hipparchus of Nicaea or of Bithynia. Little is known of his life, but coins minted at Nicaea under five different Roman emperors show him sitting and looking at a globe. Ptolemy describes him as observing in Bithynia, though the observations credited to him were made on Rhodes and in Alexandria, and he was certainly in Alexandria in 146 BC and on Rhodes in 127 and 126 BC.