Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Balam, Richard

by Francis Ysidro Edgeworth

BALAM, RICHARD (fl. 1653), mathematician, was the author of 'Algebra, or the Doctrine of composing, inferring, and resolving an Equation' (1653). There seems to be nothing original in this work but a multitude of terms which have perished with their inventor. The following sentence may be worth quoting: 'It seems probable to me that quantity is not the true genus of number; but that measure and number, magnitude and multitude, quantity and quotity, are two distinct species of one common genus.'

[Algebra, preface, cf. p. 15.]

F. Y. E.