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: 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

Berlin: Verlag Öffentliches Leben, 1935. First edition, very rare offprint issue, of Hermann’s doctoral thesis. “In 1935 Hermann published an argument demonstrating an apparent flaw in John von Neumann’s 1932 proof which was widely claimed to show that a hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics was impossible. Hermann’s result went..... More
Item #5044

[1813-1850]. An extraordinary collection of works by Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), the outstanding astronomer and physical scientist of his day, assembled for presentation to his son William James Herschel (not to be confused with John’s father, the astronomer Frederick William). The collection includes offprints of Herschel’s three most important publications..... More
Item #4321

Berlin: Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1888. First edition, complete journal issue in original printed wrappers, of one of the two most important papers of Hertz’s on electromagnetic waves, in which he demonstrates for the first time that electromagnetic effects propagate at the speed of light (it was only a month later..... More
Item #5310

[Berlin: Springer, 1925]. First edition, very rare offprint, of this famous lecture which contains Hilbert’s most detailed exposition of his proposal for the foundation of classical mathematics, which became known as Hilbert’s Programme. “No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us,” Hilbert famously declared..... More
Item #3181

Florence: In officina Iuntarum, Bernardi filiorum, 1567. First edition, very rare, of the only surviving work of Hipparchus (c. 190-127 BC). “Even the most casual discussion of ancient astronomy will not fail to call Hipparchus of Nicaea in Bithynia ‘the greatest astronomer of antiquity’” (Neugebauer, p. 320). Our knowledge of..... More
Item #3643

London: W. Godbid for J. Martyn, 1672-73. First edition, very rare, of the principal published source of the short-lived “pride and boast of British astronomy,” as he was later described by Sir John Herschel. The works published here posthumously, edited by John Wallis, constitute almost all of Horrocks’ writings that..... More
Item #5368

Edinburgh: Royal Society, 1788. First edition of this epoch-making work, the foundation of modern geology. “[Hutton’s] fundamental conception, now accepted as a matter of course, but then entirely new, was the doctrine of uniformitarianism. The formation of the surface of the earth is one continuous process which can be studied..... More
Item #5196

The Hague: Adriaan Moetjens, 1698. First edition, an exceptional copy, ruled in red throughout and in a richly decorated contemporary binding, of Huygens’s posthumously published final work, in which he expounds his theories about the possibility of life on other planets, linking them to Copernican thought: “A man that is..... More
Item #5369

Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1874-95. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of Janssen’s epoch-making description of his ‘photographic revolver’ and of its first results, “the first ‘film’” (Singer, A History of Technology V, p. 739). “The first practical device for sequential photography, invented to record the transit of Venus in 1874, was later..... More
Item #5495

Leiden: Eduard Ijdo, 1911. First printing of the first announcement of the discovery of superconductivity, the disappearance of electrical resistance in certain materials at very low temperatures. “Of all the discoveries in condensed matter physics during the 20th century, some might call superconductivity the “crown jewel”. Others might say that..... More
Item #3538

Linz: Hans Blanck, 1616. First edition, a considerably revised, rearranged and augmented version of Kepler’s Nova Stereometria published the year before, a work which is “generally regarded as one of the significant works in the prehistory of the calculus” (Gingerich in DSB). “Desiring to outfit his new household with the..... More
Item #5003