Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1824 & 1826. First printing of Fourier’s prize essay on Fourier series, and their application to the mathematical theory of heat, composed some five years before his epoch-making Théorie analytique de la chaleur. “The mathematical parts of this paper were expanded into Fourier’s most famous work, the Théorie analytique..... More
Item #5301

[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

Florence [actually Naples]: N. p., 1710. First edition, very rare large-paper copy, of the second vernacular edition of Galileo’s famous Dialogo sopra i massimi sistemi del mondo (a page-by-page reprint of the first edition). The Dialogo is Galileo’s celebrated defence of the Copernican view of the solar system. Written in..... More
Item #5281

Leiden: Elzevier, 1638. First edition, a fine copy in untouched contemporary vellum, of Galileo’s last and most important work, “the first modern textbook of physics, a foundation stone in the science of mechanics” (Grolier/Horblit); the ‘two new sciences’ were the engineering science of strength of materials and the mathematical science of..... More
Item #4985

Frankfurt: [Zacharias] Palthenius, 1610; 1611. Second edition of Galileo’s magnum opus, published just a few months after the original printing at Venice on March 10, 1610. “Galileo’s book created excitement throughout Europe and a second edition was published in the same year at Frankfurt” (DSB). This pirate edition of Sidereus..... More
Item #5062

Paris: Bachelier, 1846. First edition of Galois' collected mathematical works, for the most part previously unpublished.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 been few mathematicians with personalities as engaging as that of Galois, who died..... More
Item #5255

Albuquerque, NM: Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, 1976. First edition, exceptionally scarce, of this key document in the development of home computing, and Bill Gates’ first clear published statement of what was to become Microsoft’s hugely successful business model, the development and marketing of proprietary software. “On February 3, 1976..... More
Item #5423

Göttingen: Dieterich, 1828. First edition, the very rare separately-paginated offprint from Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Göttingensis (Vol. VI, 1828, pp. 99-146), of this “masterpiece of the mathematical literature” (Zeidler, p. 16). This is an exceptionally fine copy, uncut in its original plain wrappers. “The single most important work in the..... More
Item #5288

Göttingen: Dieterich, 1811, 1813, 1816, 1820, 1828. First editions, journal issues, of thirteen important papers by Gauss, including works on the fundamental theorem of algebra, number theory, hypergeometric functions, approximation theory, differential geometry, gravitation, and celestial mechanics. “Gauss ranks, together with Archimedes and Newton, as one of the greatest geniuses..... More
Item #4298

[Colophon:] Antwerp: G[regorius de] Bonte & Louvain: P[ierre] Phalèse, 1545. First edition, very rare, of Gemma Frisius’s remarkable astronomical treatise, the most significant early text on the astronomer’s cross-staff, with an early favourable discussion of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus (1543), and the first printed illustration of the camera obscura – Tycho..... More
Item #4956

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

Berlin: Springer, 1926. First edition of Gordon’s account of the ‘Klein-Gordon equation’ (‘KG equation’ in what follows), the first attempt at unifying wave mechanics with special relativity. The KG equation was discovered by several authors independently, the first being the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein, although the equation appeared only incidentally..... More
Item #4497