Kosmas Balanos ( el, Κοσμάς Μπαλάνος) (1731–1808) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

, author and school director. He continued the work of his father

Balanos Vasilopoulos Balanos Vasilopoulos ( el, Μπαλάνος Βασιλόπουλος; 1694–1760) was a Greek Orthodox cleric, author, mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. He is known for attempting to solve doubling the cube. He was one of the most inf ...

, and was among Greece's leading scholars of his time.

Life

He was born in

Ioannina Ioannina ( el, Ιωάννινα ' ), often called Yannena ( ' ) within Greece, is the capital and largest city of the Ioannina regional unit and of Epirus, an administrative region in north-western Greece. According to the 2011 census, the c ...

, a center of the 17th–18th-century

modern Greek Enlightenment The Modern Greek Enlightenment ( el, Διαφωτισμός, ''Diafotismos'', "enlightenment," "illumination"; also known as the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment) was the Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment. Origins The Greek Enlightenment w ...

movement. Balanos was the first son of the scholar

and became a priest like his father had done before him. He taught at various Greek-language schools of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, initially in

Thessaly Thessaly ( el, Θεσσαλία, translit=Thessalía, ; ancient Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic and modern administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thes ...

, and then in

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area, and the capi ...

. Around 1760 he succeeded his father as director of the Gouma School in Ioannina.Μπαλάνος Κοσμάς 1731, Ιωάννινα – 1807/8, Ιωάννινα
Ελληνομνήμων. University of Athens database. During the 1790s, the Gouma school faced serious financial difficulties, but Balanos managed to find new sponsors among the prosperous Ioannite diaspora and especially the

Zosimades The Zosimades ( el, Ζωσιμάδες) or Zosimas brothers were 18th-19th century Greek benefactors and merchants. The Zosimades were six brothers: *Ioannis Zosimas (1752–1771) * Anastasios Zosimas (1754–1828) * Nikolaos Zosimas (1758–1842 ...

brothers. After about 40 years in the Gouma school, Balanos left his post in 1799 to his brother Konstantinos. Balanos, as a conservative scholar, used archaic Greek in his work and rejected the use of the

Demotic Demotic may refer to: * Demotic Greek, the modern vernacular form of the Greek language * Demotic (Egyptian), an ancient Egyptian script and version of the language * Chữ Nôm, the demotic script for writing Vietnamese See also * * Demos (disa ...

, the vernacular form of the Greek language. He also became involved in a personal conflict with the progressive scholar

Athanasios Psalidas Athanasios Psalidas ( el, Αθανάσιος Ψαλίδας; 1767–1829), was a Greek author, scholar and one of the most renowned figures of the modern Greek Enlightenment. Life Early years and diaspora Psalidas was born at 1767 in Ioannina, whe ...

, schoolmaster of the

Kaplaneios School The Kaplaneios School ( el, Καπλάνειος Σχολή) was a Greek educational institution that operated in Ioannina from 1797 to 1820/1. The school evolved into the most significant intellectual center of the city through the work of Athan ...

in the same city, whom he denounced to the local ruler,

Ali Pasha Ali Pasha was the name of numerous Ottoman pashas named Ali. It is most commonly used to refer to Ali Pasha of Ioannina. People * Çandarlı Ali Pasha (died 1406), Ottoman grand vizier (1387–1406) * Hadım Ali Pasha (died 1511), Ottoman grand v ...

, as an atheist and voltairianist.

Work

In 1798 Balanos published in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

the work ''Έκθεσις συνοπτικής αριθμητικής, αλγέβρης και χρονολογίας'' (''Concise Exposition of Arithmetics, Algebra and Chronology''). He wrote the philosophical work ''Περί ελλείψεως των παραλειπομένων φωτών παρά τοις αρίστοις των ποιητών και των καταλογάδην συγγραψάντων'' (On the omission of the unmentioned lights by the excellent among the poets and among those whο wrote prose). Moreover, he published his father

' work ''Έκθεσις ακριβεστάτη της Αριθμητικής (Most Precise Exposition of Arithmetic'', Venice, 1803). After his death, his work ''Αντιπελάργησις'' (''Antipelargisis'', Against the Stork) was published in 1816, in which he rejected his father's claim to have solved the problem of

doubling the cube Doubling the cube, also known as the Delian problem, is an ancient geometric problem. Given the edge of a cube, the problem requires the construction of the edge of a second cube whose volume is double that of the first. As with the related pro ...

, i.e. finding the cube root of 2 by a graphical method (which was later shown to be impossible). He composed a historical work about

Epirus sq, Epiri rup, Epiru , native_name_lang = , settlement_type = Historical region , image_map = Epirus antiquus tabula.jpg , map_alt = , map_caption = Map of ancient Epirus by Heinrich ...

, in which Ioannina was the urban center, ''Ιστορικό της Ηπείρου'' (History of Epirus), which remains unpublished. Balanos also wrote various texts about the social conditions of the region he lived, like describing the forced 18th century Islamizations of local Christians by the Ottoman authorities. Moreover, he composed theological and philosophical works, as well as school textbooks. Many of these works remained unpublished and were burned with the destruction of the Balanos family library during Ali Pasha's defeat by the Sultan's forces in 1822.

References

External links

*Works of Kosmas Balanos:
Έκθεσις Συνοπτική Aριθμητικής, Άλγεβρας και Χρονολογίας (Vienna, 1798)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Balanos, Kosmas 1731 births 1808 deaths Eastern Orthodox Christians from Greece People of the Modern Greek Enlightenment Greek mathematicians Scientists from Ioannina Ottoman Ioannina 18th-century Greek scientists 18th-century Greek educators