[Altona: Hammerich- und Heineking’schen Buchdruckerey, 1825]. First edition, extremely rare separately-paginated offprint (journal pagination 31-92), inscribed by Fraunhofer to John Herschel, of this work on atmospheric optical phenomena, including haloes and parhelia. “Fraunhofer had carried out experiments in 1825 with diffraction in disordered small gaps and particles, and developed the..... More
Item #5229

Paris: Bachelier, 1846. First edition, a remarkable copy uncut in the original printed wrappers and very rare thus, of Galois' collected mathematical works, for the most part previously unpublished. Their posthumous publication was due to Joseph Liouville, editor of the leading French journal on pure and applied mathematics. “There have..... More
Item #5819

Göttingen: Dieterich, 1818. First edition, very rare separately-paginated offprint, preceding the journal appearance in Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis (vol. 4, pp. 21-48) by two years. “In his first years at Göttingen, Gauss experienced a second upsurge of ideas and publications in various fields of mathematics. Among the latter were several..... More
Item #5312

Göttingen: Dieterich, 1823-1828. First edition, extremely rare separately-paginated offprints, of Gauss’s definitive presentation of the theory of least squares which “was the dominant theme – the leitmotif – of nineteenth-century mathematical statistics” (Stigler, p. 11). “Surveying problems motivated Gauss to develop his ideas on least squares and more general problems..... More
Item #5422

Zürich: Jacob Gesner, 1565 [–1566]. First edition and a fine copy in contemporary binding, very rare when complete, of this collection of eight treatises, the most important being De rerum fossilium [On fossil Objects], Gesner’s last work, the earliest scientific attempt to classify the mineral kingdom, and the first illustrated..... More
Item #5001

New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1881. First edition, first issue (see below), of this extremely rare pamphlet which “marks the beginning of modern vector analysis” (Crowe, p. 150). “Nearly all branches of classical physics and many areas of modern physics are now presented in the language of vectors, and..... More
Item #4853

London: William du Gard for Laurence Sadler and Robert Beaumont, 1650. First edition, co-author’s copy, of the first full clinical description of rickets, then thought to have appeared only recently in England, and the first description of infantile scurvy. “In 1645 the Royal College of Physicians assigned to Glisson, Bate..... More
Item #5420

Lancaster, PA: American Physical Society, 1949. First edition, journal issue, in original printed wrappers, of Gödel’s ‘time-travel paper,’ ‘one of the most important [papers] on relativity since my own original paper appeared’ (Einstein to Morgenstern, 1952). “In the 1920s and 1930s, the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological models had been introduced as the..... More
Item #5820

Nottingham: Printed for the author, by T. Wheelhouse, 1828. First edition, “excessively rare” (Wheeler Gift), of “one of the major publications in the mathematics of the 19th century” (Landmark Writings, p. 403), in which Green revolutionized the study of potential theory as we now understand it (and coined the term..... More
Item #5637

Amsterdam: Johanned Jansson Waesberge, 1672. First edition of one of the great classics of science. “A book of prime importance in electrical discovery, air-pressure and the vacuum pump” (Dibner). Guericke proved the existence of a vacuum through his famous experiment, illustrated by one of the double-page plates. “At Ratisbon in..... More
Item #5796

Berlin: Walter de Gruyter und Co., 1939 [1942, 1944]. First edition, offprint issues, of the three fundamental papers on nuclear fission which eventually lead to the creation of the atom bomb. “…experiments conducted in 1938 at Berlin by Hahn and Strassman [sic] were reported to Lise Meitner, an Austrian scientist..... More
Item #4152

London: Printed for Dan Brown, Tim. Goodwin, John Walthoe, Tho. Newborough, John Nicholson, Tho. Benskin, Benj. Tooke, Dan. Midwinter, Tho. Leigh, and Francis Coggan, 1704-10. First edition of perhaps the most important single source for the history of science and engineering at the end of the scientific revolution. Its emphasis..... More
Item #5408

London: Printed by Francis Leach, 1653. First edition in English of De motu cordis (1628), in which was described the discovery and proof of the circulation of the blood; this is the very rare first issue with uncancelled title and this leaf unclipped by the printer (see below). Harvey’s discovery..... More
Item #5638