Kosmas Balanos is remembered in mathematics for work the next generation could build on.
The record lists Kosmas Balanos as Greek mathematician, author and school director.
Kosmas Balanos was born at Ioannina in 1731. His recorded nationality is Greece.
This was the age of analysis, when the calculus was pushed hard and its foundations were not yet secure.
Mathematics accumulates without discarding: a proof from two thousand years ago is still a proof.
That the work was done from Greece matters: mathematical training, institutions and the language of publication have never been evenly distributed.
Kosmas Balanos died in 1808, aged 77. The proofs remain, and a proof does not decay - which is the particular permanence mathematics offers.
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