Hypsicles

Hypsicles (Greek Ὑψικλῆς to 175 BC) was a Greek astronomer and mathematician.

Hypsicles lived in Alexandria. About his life almost nothing is known. He is the author of the apocryphal Book 14 of Euclid's Elements, the regular inscribed in a sphere polyhedra - icosahedron and dodecahedron - is and possibly goes back to an edited from Hypsicles text of Apollonius, as Hypsicles himself in the preface writes (his father in Alexandria and a Basilides of Tyre had discussed the related book by Apollonius and found defective ).

It is also called as the author of Anaphorikos ( Ἀναφορικός, About the rising of the star ), in which is found the first clue in the Greek mathematical and astronomical literature on a circle classification system of 360 degrees ( in the division of the zodiac circle ), which he probably took over from the Babylonians, from their astronomical knowledge his contemporary Hipparchus drew.

Thomas Heath questions the authorship due to some mathematical errors in the text.

Diophantus of Alexandria mentions a definition of Polygonalzahlen of Hypsicles, a related book of Hypsicles but lost.