London: John Murray, 1830-1832-1833. First edition of this “classic by ‘the father of modern geology’” (Grolier/Horblit), famous for “establishing a new era in geology” (DSB), presenting the doctrine of uniformitarianism, namely, that the processes of the past must be judged by those of the present. “One of the key works..... More
Item #5181

London: Printed for the author’s children and sold by A. Millar, et al. 1748. First edition, large-paper copy, of Maclaurin’s statement of Newtonian theory, one of the three “most outstanding popular introductions to Newtonian science of the eighteenth century” (I. B. Cohen, Franklin and Newton, 1956, p. 209). “Though a...... More
Item #3409

London: for William and John Innys, 1720. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Maclaurin’s first book, dedicated to Newton and bearing his imprimatur as president of the Royal Society. Maclaurin is best known for his Treatise of Fluxions (1742), “the earliest logical and systematic publication of the Newtonian methods..... More
Item #5542

Modena: impensis Authoris ex Typ. Cassiani, 1662. First edition of these very rare ephemerides, containing one of the most detailed lunar maps up to that time. Cornelio Malvasia (1603-63), a wealthy nobleman and amateur astronomer from Bologna, made his astronomical observations in the private observatory he built over his villa..... More
Item #5401

Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1888. A remarkable collection of offprints documenting Marey’s foundational contributions to the science of cinematography. Marey was “the lead character in the birth of scientific cinema” (Tosi, p. 82); he “was the first to use a single camera to produce photographs on a strip of sensitized film in..... More
Item #5494

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

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

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

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: 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

[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

Paris: Anselin, 1842. First edition, journal issue, of Menabrea’s account of the only public presentation that Babbage ever made concerning the design and operation of the Analytical Engine. “This was the first published account of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine and the first account of its logical design, including the first..... More
Item #5187

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