Vienna: Leopold J. Kaliwoda, 1745. First edition, author’s presentation copy, of “one of the most exquisitely illustrated astronomical works ever printed” (Kenney, p. 200), which describes and illustrates the astronomical instruments in the private observatory of Marinoni, mathematician and astronomer to the Imperial Court of Austria and geodetic surveyor. Like..... More
Item #5400
Montpelier: Daniel Pech, 1671. First edition, very rare, of this important work, of which “less than a dozen copies are known to exist, most imperfect” (The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, vol. 2, p. 153. “Sold only by the author at his home in Montpellier, the Pratique contains clear..... More
Item #3380
Berlin (i.e., Paris): np, 1754. First edition in French, the earliest obtainable, and very rare, of Maupertuis’ remarkable original work on the nature of heredity and evolution, which marks him out, in the words of evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr (The Growth of Biological Thought, p. 328), as “one of the..... More
Item #5233
Hambourg [i.e., Leiden]: [Élie Luzac], 1753. First edition, rare, of this collection of pamphlets relating to the ‘König affair,’ the celebrated polemic on the principle of least action, “perhaps the ugliest of all the famous scientific disputes” (DSB VII: 442). The König affair is of considerable importance in the history..... More
Item #4957
Hambourg [i.e., Leiden]: [Élie Luzac], 1753. First edition, rare, of this collection of pamphlets relating to the ‘König affair,’ the celebrated polemic on the principle of least action, “perhaps the ugliest of all the famous scientific disputes” (DSB VII: 442). This is an exceptional association copy, from the library of..... More
Item #5306
Venice: apud Franciscum Franciscium Senensem, 1575. First and only edition, rare, and with a distinguished provenance, containing seven ‘opuscula,’ and, with separate title and pagination, the Arithmeticorum libri duo; all of these works were published here for the first time. One of the ‘opuscula’ contains the most important original work..... More
Item #5621
Messina: Pietro Spira, August 1558. First edition, ‘excessively rare’ (Sotheran), of this collection of works on ‘spherics’, the geometrical and trigonometrical techniques necessary for the description of the motion of the celestial bodies, including Maurolico’s Latin translations of works by four ancient Greek writers, Autolycus, Menelaus, Euclid and Theodosius, those..... More
Item #2881
London & Cambridge: Macmillan, 1871. First edition, extremely rare, of Maxwell's inaugural lecture as Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, which marks the beginning of the tradition of experimental research at the Cavendish Laboratory, a tradition which was to lead to 29 Nobel Prizes being awarded to..... More
Item #4958
London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1876. First edition, rare on the market in this condition, of Maxwell's textbook on dynamics, “a masterpiece of natural philosophy, notable especially for introducing into physics the term relativity in a passage that combines strenuous scientific insight with a mystical awareness … [It] had..... More
Item #3849
London: Harrison & Sons, 1880. First edition, in the very rare original printed wrappers, of Maxwell’s last paper, “published posthumously in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, [which] concerned a means of measuring the speed of the Earth through the hypothetical aether, and was the inspiration for Michelson and Morley’s..... More
Item #4303
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873. First edition, first issue, from the library of an important 19th century electrical engineer, of Maxwell’s presentation of his theory of electromagnetism, advancing ideas that would become essential for modern physics, including the landmark “hypothesis that light and electricity are the same in their ultimate nature”..... More
Item #5293
![Item #3910 Mutable loci in maize. [Offered with:] Some parallels between gene control systems in...](/pictures/thumb/3910.jpg?v=1592228766)
Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1948. First edition, the very rare offprint issue, of the first of the papers documenting McClintock’s discovery of ‘control elements,’ for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1983. “Between 1948 and 1951, McClintock carried out a series of sophisticated experiments with variegated..... More
Item #3910
[London: Macmillan, 1939]. First edition, extremely rare offprints, of the discovery of nuclear fission, a process which had been observed by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann the previous year but for which they were unable to provide an explanation. “In the late 1930s, a series of experiments showed that bombarding..... More
Item #5185
Nantes; Paris: the author & Forest; Bachelier, 1836. First edition, presentation copy, extremely rare, of the privately printed proof of Midy’s Theorem. “It is well known that a real number is rational if and only if its decimal expansion is a repeating decimal. For example, 2/7 = .285714285714 … Many..... More
Item #5801
London: Taylor & Francis, 1910. A fine copy of Millikan’s famous experiment, later known as the ‘oil-drop experiment’, in which he first provided the definitive proof that all electrical charges are exact multiples of a definite, fundamental value—the charge of the electron. Millikan’s experiment is nowadays known as the ‘oil-drop..... More
Item #4548
London: W[illiam]. Pearson for the Author, 1718. First edition of this classic on the theory of probability, the first original work on the subject in English. “De Moivre’s book on chances is considered the foundation for the field of probability and statistics” (Tomash). “De Moivre’s masterpiece is The Doctrine of..... More
Item #5803
![Item #5399 Libro de la Anothomia del hō[m]bre … Muy util y necessario a los medicos y...](/pictures/thumb/5399.jpg?v=1630929565)
Valladolid: Sebastian Martinez, 1551. First edition, very rare, of the first separate, and first illustrated, anatomical work in the vernacular printed in Spain. “While Valverde di Hamusco’s Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano (1556) is often credited with introducing into Spain the Vesalian anatomical iconography coupled with a vernacular..... More
Item #5399
Pesaro: Hieronymus Concordia, 1577. First edition of the author’s first work, generally regarded as the most important treatise on mechanics since Archimedes and a critical influence on Monte’s friend and disciple Galileo."From the time of its publication in 1577, [it was] the most authoritative treatise on statics to emerge since..... More
Item #5398
Pesaro: Girolamo Concordia, 1579. First edition, very rare, the Jones-Macclesfield copy, signed by William Jones, of the first modern theoretical treatise on the planisphere, an instrument for representing the celestial sphere on a plane surface. Guidobaldo was one of the most prominent figures in the renaissance of the mathematical sciences..... More
Item #5426
Venice: Evangelisto Deuchino, 1615. First edition, the Macclesfield copy, of this very rare and important work of Renaissance engineering and mathematics, Guidobaldo’s analysis of the theory and operation of Archimedes’ most famous mechanical invention, the ‘cochlea’ or ‘Archimedean screw’. This is a device used for raising water consisting of a...... More
Item #5425
Pesaro; Bologna: apud Hieronymum Concordiam; Costantino Pisarri, 1588 [colophon, 1587]; 1711. First edition, the beautiful Macclesfield copy, of Guidobaldo’s Paraphrasis, the important companion to his Mechanicorum liber (1577), regarded as the greatest work on statics since the Greeks, which employed the mathematically rigorous proofs of Archimedes to the investigation of..... More
Item #4716
Venice: Bernardo Giunta & G.B. Ciotti, 1609. First edition, very rare, of the principal astronomical work of one of the greatest Renaissance mathematicians. “Guidobaldo was Galileo’s patron and friend for twenty years and was possibly the greatest single influence on the mechanics of Galileo” (DSB). Guidobaldo was also influential in..... More
Item #2745
Paris: Jacque Quillau, 1708. First edition, first issue, very rare, of the first separately published textbook of probability. This issue has significant textual differences from what is usually referred to as the first edition. “In 1708 [Montmort] published his work on Chances, where with the courage of Columbus he revealed..... More
Item #4632
Venice: Remondini, 1761. First edition, first issue, a very fine copy, of “one of the most important [works] in the history of medicine” (Garrison & Morton). “After Antonio Benivieni (1443-1502), Giovanni Battista Morgagni is considered the founder of pathological anatomy. His ‘De sedibus’, regarded as one of the most important..... More
Item #5608
Paris: Antoine Boudet, 1746. First edition, rare on the market, of “the first specialized book on dental prosthetics” (G & M), and perhaps the first contribution to what would later be called “cosmetic dentistry.” “Mouton, in 1746, … gave to the light a monograph, the first extant, on mechanical dentistry..... More
Item #5166