Rome: Camera Apostolica, 1630. First edition, extremely rare, and a magnificent copy from the library of Kenelm Digby, of the most important work of the great Croatian mathematician Marino Ghetaldi (or Marin Getaldić) who, while he did not introduce coordinates, is regarded by many scholars, on the basis of the..... More
Item #5465
![Item #4853 Elements of Vector Analysis. [Offered with:] Autograph letter from Gibbs to John...](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/4853.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&v=1597316185)
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
Paris: Chez l'autheur, 1663. First edition, rare, of this very important chemistry text, which went through some thirteen editions between 1663 and 1710. “The Traité is Glaser’s only publication. Printed in a small number at the author’s expense, the first edition was sold from his house. Rapidly becoming a best..... More
Item #3412
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
[Leyden]: in bibliopolio Commeliniano sumptibus viduae Joannis Comelini, 1620. First edition, extremely rare, of one of the earliest modern works on atomism. “Gorlaeus is counted among the founders of modern atomism, which he proposed as an alternative to Aristotelian matter theory. Because of his notion of atomic compounds, he is..... More
Item #4573
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, and a fine copy, 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..... More
Item #3763
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
London: William Jones, 1623. First edition, extremely rare complete as here, of Gunter’s book on the sector and other mathematical instruments, “one of the most influential scientific works on navigation” (Waters, p. 359), the work which introduced logarithms into the science of navigation and led to the development of the..... More
Item #5913
![Item #4152 ‘Uber das Zerplatzen des Urankernes Durch Langsame Neutronen.’ [TOGETHER WITH:]...](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/4152.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&v=1593078597)
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
![Item #5050 ‘Uber das Zerplatzen des Urankernes Durch Langsame Neutronen.’ [TOGETHER WITH:]...](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/5050.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&v=1602480695)
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter und Co., 1939 [1942, 1944]. First edition, the true offprint issues, i.e., in orange wrappers, 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..... More
Item #5050
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
[Brookhaven, NY: The American Physical Society], 1983. First edition, very rare offprint, and Hawking’s own file copy, of this famous paper describing the 'no-boundary proposal’ for the origin of the universe. “Stephen sought to understand the whole universe in scientific terms. As he said famously, ‘My goal is simple. It..... More
Item #5075
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
[London: Macmillan, 1974]. First edition, extremely rare offprint issue, and Hawking’s own file copy, of his most important article, predicting that black holes emit radiation, now known as ‘Hawking radiation’. This would cause relatively low mass black holes (less than 1012 kg) to ‘evaporate’ completely in a time less than..... More
Item #5076
Berlin: Springer, 1926. First edition of the explanation of the anomalous Zeeman effect on the basis of matrix mechanics. “By including the spin property of the electron, Heisenberg and Jordan obtained perhaps the greatest triumph of matrix mechanics: they were able to derive all observed phenomena connected with the anomalous..... More
Item #3528
Berlin: Springer, 1943. First edition, extremely rare offprints, of Heisenberg’s S-matrix approach to the study of elementary particles. “Heisenberg’s prewar researches in quantum field theory, undertaken in part with Pauli, had led him to the study of cosmic rays, the highest energy particles then available for research. When an extremely..... More
Item #5971
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1922. First edition of Heisenberg’s first published paper, journal issue in original printed wrappers, describing his ‘core model’ of the atom and its application to solve the problems of the multiplet structure in atomic spectra and the anomalous Zeeman effect, which had defeated all previous attempts. “Just..... More
Item #3527
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1928. First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, of Heisenberg’s solution of the problem of ferromagnetism, and a remarkable association copy linking two of the greatest figures in twentieth-century physics. Bohr and Heisenberg are also linked by the subject matter of the present work. In his..... More
Item #3526
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1929-30. First edition, journal issues in original printed wrappers, of this two-part paper which represents the “formal invention of quantum electrodynamics [QED]” (Miller, p. xiii). “Three years before the discovery of the positron Heisenberg and Pauli – in two papers ‘Zur Quantenmechanik der Wellenfelder’ and ‘Zur Quantenmechanik..... More
Item #2627
Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1882-1883. First edition, extremely rare author’s presentation offprints, of all three parts of one of the founding paper of chemical thermodynamics, along with Josiah Willard Gibbs’s 1876 paper ‘On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances.’ In these papers, Helmholtz introduced the concept of ‘free energy’ and proved..... More
Item #5192
Leipzig: Leopold Voss, 1856-60-66-67. First edition, and the only recorded copy in the original parts, of “the most important book on the physiology and physics of vision” (Grolier/Horblit), and “one of the greatest books on physiological optics” (Garrison-Morton). This work encompassed all previous research in the field, including the results..... More
Item #5275
Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1847. First edition, rare, of “the first comprehensive statement of the first law of thermodynamics: that all modes of energy, heat, light, electricity, and all chemical phenomena, are capable of transformation from one to the other but are indestructible and cannot be created” (PMM). “On the basis..... More
Item #4842
Berlin: Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1868. First edition, very rare, of Helmholtz’s famous and important contribution to non-Euclidean geometry, ‘On the facts which lay at the foundations of geometry’. “Motivated by his study of visual perception, throughout the mid-1860s Helmholtz investigated the most general analytic expressions of spatial relations. He..... More
Item #5428