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
[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
Naples: Matthaeus Nuccius, 1627. First Italian edition, very rare, of Grassi’s counter-polemic against Galileo’s Il saggiatore (1623). This is the concluding work in the series of publications which document the “controversy of the comets,” one of the most infamous polemics in the history of science. According to Drake, these texts..... More
Item #4009
Bologna: heirs of Vittorio Benacci for Girolamo Bernia, 1665. First edition, rare, of Grimaldi’s only book, in which he describes his discovery of the diffraction of light, “a new mode of transmission of light [that] contradicts the notion of an exclusively rectilinear passage of light” (DSB). This is perhaps the..... More
Item #3397
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
Paris: Pierre Gaultier, 30 April 1544. First edition, an exceptionally fine, large and fresh copy, completely unsophisticated, of one of the most beautiful scientific books of the Renaissance, which well deserves the praise lavished on it by Herrlinger, who calls it “a typographically exquisite specimen of Parisian printing craft” and..... More
Item #5010
Nuremberg: printed by Christoph Gerhard for Paulus Fürst, 1666. First edition of one of the most beautiful instrument books published in the seventeenth century and certainly one of the rarest, particularly with the full complement of plates. This work is an enlargement, by his student Sturm, of Habrecht’s famous treatise..... More
Item #4705
![‘Uber das Zerplatzen des Urankernes Durch Langsame Neutronen.’ [TOGETHER WITH:] HAHN,...](/pictures/thumb/4152.jpg?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
![‘Uber das Zerplatzen des Urankernes Durch Langsame Neutronen.’ [TOGETHER WITH:] HAHN,...](/pictures/thumb/5050.jpg?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 by T. and J.W. Pasham, in Black-Friars, and sold by the booksellers, in London and Westminster, 1763. First edition, extremely rare, of Harrison’s announcement of his invention and testing of his first accurate chronometer, the famous ‘sea-watch’ later called H4, which solved the problem of determining longitude at..... More
Item #4994
[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
Paris: J. Anisson, 1694. First edition, rare, of Hartsoeker's first and most important work, in which he reviewed the principles of optics as far as they were known by the end of the 17th century. In addition to the physics of light and the physiology of vision, the book also..... More
Item #4518
Leyden: Johann Maire, 1639. Third, but second complete, edition of the single most important and famous medical book ever published, containing Harvey’s discovery and experimental proof of the circulation of the blood, which created a revolution in physiology comparable to the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Harvey’s discovery was to become..... More
Item #3607
Paris: Gogué & Née de la Rochelle, 1784. First edition of Haüy’s first printed book, an exceptionally fine copy, very rare in this condition. “The foundation of the mathematical theory of crystal structure. Haüy proposed six types of primary crystal forms (parallelpiped, rhombic dodecahedron, hexagonal dipyramid, right hexagonal prism, octahedron..... More
Item #4871
[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
[N.p. N.p., 1943-44]. Historic autograph letter from Werner Heisenberg (1901-76), the inventor of quantum mechanics and author of the famous uncertainty principle, to his fellow physicist and sometime collaborator Hendrik Anthony Kramers (1894-1952), discussing Heisenberg’s S-matrix approach to elementary particle physics and urging Kramers to collaborate with him on a...... More
Item #5304
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: A. Förstner, 1851. First edition, an exceptionally fine copy in original printed wrappers, of this famous work which describes Helmholtz’s announcement of his invention of the ophthalmoscope, one of the most important clinical tools in medicine, which greatly improved the ability of ophthalmologists to diagnose eye disease and revolutionized..... More
Item #4855
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
Philadelphia: Printed by James Kay, Jun. & Brothers, 1839. First edition, author’s presentation offprint, of the third and most important part of Henry’s Contributions to Electricity and Magnetism. Following on from his discovery of electromagnetic self-induction in 1832, in the present paper Henry extends his results on ‘galvanic’ electricity (current..... More
Item #4282