Colonia [Venice]: Andrea Poletti, 1693. First edition, rare when complete, of this sumptuously illustrated work, a uniquely valuable source for the documentation of several of the most elaborate large-scale globes and astronomical mechanisms, some now lost, constructed during the latter decades of the seventeenth century. Coronelli, a Franciscan monk, was..... More
Item #4861

Manchester: Printed by Harrison and Crosfield for Baldwin and Cradock, 1834. Second edition (first, 1793), inscribed by Dalton, of Dalton’s first book which, according to Dalton himself, “contained the germs of most of the ideas afterwards expanded by him into discoveries” (DNB V, 428-34). Dalton (1766-1844) is famous today for..... More
Item #4946

Manchester: S. Russell for R. Bickerstaff; Russell & Allen for R. Bickerstaff; Executives of S. Russell for G. Wilson, 1808-1810-1827. First edition of Dalton’s classic work on the atomic theory of matter, very rare when complete with all three parts in the original boards with the original printed spine labels..... More
Item #3950

London: Henry Colburn, 1839. First edition, and a virtually mint copy, almost entirely unopened. “The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career” (Charles Darwin, Life and Letters I, p. 61). “The five years of the voyage..... More
Item #4562

London: John Murray, 1872. Sixth edition (the first to employ the word ‘evolution’), inscribed by Darwin, of “the most influential scientific work of the nineteenth century” (Horblit), “the most important biological work ever written” (Freeman), and “a turning point, not only in the history of science, but in the history..... More
Item #4981

[Lyon]: Guillaume Huyon for Constantin Fradin, June 2, 1520. First edition, extremely rare, of the first published work on algebra in French. This is a fine copy in a beautiful contemporary binding. Born in Lyon, then the principal commercial centre of France, La Roche was a student of Nicolas Chuquet..... More
Item #4636

Paris: Baudouin & Garnery, 1806-1810. First edition, uncut in contemporary boards, of the foundation work of the metric system. “For many centuries there were no general standards for measurement: every trade and craft had its own peculiar units and they differed even in various regions of the same country. Since..... More
Item #4789

Leiden: Jan Maire, 1637. First edition, a fine, large copy, of Descartes’ first and most famous work. Following the Discours, now celebrated as one of the canonical texts of Western philosophy, are three ‘Essais’, the last of which, La Géométrie, contains the birth of analytical or co-ordinate geometry, “of epoch-making..... More
Item #4982

Paris: chez Henry Le Gras, au troisième pilier de la grand’ Salle du Palais, à L couronnée, 1649. First edition of Descartes’s important psychological treatise, one of his most influential works, and the last work published before his death in the following year. This is a fine copy in an..... More
Item #4125

Paris: H. Drouart, 1621. Editio princeps of the first systematic treatise on algebra (Smith, Rara Arithmetica, p. 348), comprising the first printing of the Greek text, accompanied by Xylander’s Latin translation (1575) and Bachet’s commentary. “The Arithmetica is essentially a logistical work, but with the difference that Diophantus’ problems are..... More
Item #2441

[Berlin: c. 1846]. A remarkable survival, this is the autograph working manuscript of a paper on the application of mathematical analysis to problems in physics by “one of the most important mathematicians of the 19th century … the man who, more than any other, brought rigour to mathematical analysis” (Gray..... More
Item #4921

[Cambridge: University Press, 1905]. First edition, extremely rare offprint, inscribed by Edgeworth, of his most important contribution to mathematical statistics. “The most important of the papers relating to this subject” (Bowley). “‘Of all the great economists in this book, he [Edgeworth] is (apart from Bernoulli and Slutsky) the only one..... More
Item #4955

Lancaster, PA: American Physical Society, 1945-46. First edition, extremely rare offprints, of Einstein & Straus’s introduction of the ‘Swiss-cheese’ model of the universe. “After [a] decade and a half of sometimes intense work on cosmology, Einstein returned to the subject only occasionally in his later years. His most significant later..... More
Item #5054