Leyden: Jean Maire, 1649. First separate edition of Descartes’s magnum opus (DSB), the invention of coordinate geometry and one of the key texts in the history of mathematics – this is an exceptional copy, uncut in the original interim boards. The Geometry was originally published in French as the third..... More
Item #4776

Basel: Eusebius & Heirs of Nikolaus Episcopius, 1575. First edition, very rare, of the first systematic treatise on algebra (Smith, Rara Arithmetica, p. 348), which “inspired the rebirth of number theory” (Britannica), translated from the Greek by Wilhelm Holtzmann [Xylander] – the original Greek text was not published until 1621..... More
Item #4710

Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy at l’Imprimerie Royale, 1675 [colophon date]-1676 [title page date]. First edition of “one of the great books in the history of botanical illustration, where all the technical resources of engraving were utilized in presenting the plants as accurately as possible” (Hunt), here accompanied by 5 additional engraved..... More
Item #5358

Prague: Gottlieb Haase & Sons, 1846. First edition, very rare separately-paginated offprint, of this important complement to Doppler’s epoch-making discovery in 1842 of the principle named after him. The three articles comprising this offprint contain extensions of the Doppler principle, as well as the first suggestion to use photographic and..... More
Item #4936

London: Published and sold at the Commissioners of Patents Sale Department [British Patent Office], 1880. First edition, of the greatest rarity, of the first British patent granted to Edison for his most famous invention, that of an incandescent electric light. Perhaps more than any other, it was this invention that..... More
Item #4839

Lancaster, PA: American Physical Society, 1935. First edition, very rare offprint, of the famous ‘EPR paper’, one of the most discussed and debated papers of modern physics, and the foundation for the new fields of quantum computing and cryptography. “In the May 15, 1935 issue of Physical Review Albert Einstein..... More
Item #5045

Berlin: Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1914. First edition of this extremely rare offprint, a remarkable association copy inscribed by the theoretical physicist Gunnar Nordström, often designated by modern writers as ‘The Einstein of Finland’. Einstein had an extended correspondence with Nordström on the subject of Nordström’s own competing theory of..... More
Item #4585

Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1911. First edition, rare author’s presentation offprint (with ‘Überreicht vom Verfasser’ (Presented by the Author) stamped on front wrapper), and the copy of Einstein’s son Hans Albert, of Einstein’s “first paper completely devoted to general relativity” (Brandt, p. 105). This epochal paper applies the equivalence principle..... More
Item #5081

Paris: Melchior Mondiere, 1625. Very rare editio princeps of this important text by Euclid, his only work in pure geometry, other than the Elements, to have survived in Greek. It is here accompanied by a commentary, or rather an introduction, by Marinus of Naples (5th century AD), the pupil and..... More
Item #3427

St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1769-1770-1771. First edition, a beautiful copy in original wrappers, of Euler’s magnum opus on optics, “widely known and important in the physics of the eighteenth century,” which “laid the foundations of the calculation of optical systems” (DSB). “The Dioptricae presented a universal optics with..... More
Item #5225

St. Petersburg: Academiae Imperialis Scientiarum, 1768-69-70. First edition, very rare when complete with the folding plate, of the third part of Euler’s monumental trilogy on analysis, following his Introductio in analysis infinitorum (1748) and Institutiones calculi differentialis (1755). “They were not didactic works in the sense that they did not..... More
Item #5364

St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1768-1772. First edition, in the original interim wrappers, of these letters to the Princess Friederike Charlotte Leopoldine Louise of Brandenburg-Schwedt, to whom Euler had given lessons during his stay in Berlin. The work “had an immense success and profoundly influenced contemporary philosophy” (PMM 196..... More
Item #3992

Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1746; 1750; 1751. First edition, an outstanding copy uncut in the original boards, of Euler’s three-volume Opuscula varii argumenti (although only the first volume bears this title), a collection of thirteen tracts, all except one published here for the first time. The most important is the..... More
Item #4420