Stockholm: Lars Salvius, 1764. First edition in book form, rare, of this seminal treatise on paediatrics. “Sir Frederic Still considered this work ‘the most progressive which had yet been written;’ it gave an impetus to research which influenced the future course of paediatrics. Rosen was particularly interested in infant feeding..... More
Item #5929

Paris: Antoine Dezallier, 1679. First and only edition, incredibly rare, of the last (surviving) contribution published by the brilliant French mathematician Girard Desargues in the notorious ‘perspective wars’ – Desargues was “the greatest perspectivist and projective geometer of his generation” (Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 120). Desargues published his..... More
Item #5918

Basel: Henric Petri, 1570. First edition of Cardano’s mathematical treatment of mechanics, the Opus novum, together with the revised, second edition of his Ars Magna (first 1545) – the greatest work of 16th century algebra – and with the first edition of a supplement to that work, the De Aliza..... More
Item #5904

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930. First edition, and a fine copy with the dust-wrapper, of Dirac’s famous and hugely influential textbook, which “summarized the foundations of a new science, much of which was his own creation. It expressed the spirit of the new quantum mechanics, creating a descriptive language that we..... More
Item #5883

Edinburgh; London: Sutherland and Knox, Princes Street; Samuel Highley, 32 Fleet Street, 1847 [Postscript dated 15 November 1847]. Second edition, extremely rare first issue, inscribed presentation copy, of the first use of chloroform as an anaesthetic. This is the earliest obtainable version of Simpson’s discovery – the first edition, published..... More
Item #5874

München: Lentner, [1817]. First edition, journal issue, of the founding work of astrophysics, the discovery of the absorption lines in the solar spectrum; the second plate, which reproduces Fraunhofer’s drawing of these lines (etched by Fraunhofer himself), is the first illustration of the solar spectrum. “In 1802, when describing his..... More
Item #5864

Frankfurt: Erasmus Kempfer for Godefrid Tampach, 1621-1622. Second, enlarged, edition of the Mysterium cosmographicum (first, 1596), Kepler’s first scientific book, “the first unabashedly Copernican treatise since De revolutionibus itself” (Gingerich in DSB), which laid “the foundation of his vast later astronomical work [and] immediately made him famous in scientific circles..... More
Item #5861

Lausanne & Geneve: Marcum-Michaelem Bosquet & Socios, 1744. First edition of “Euler’s most valuable contribution to mathematics in which he developed the concept of the calculus of variations” (Norman). “’This work displays an amount of mathematical genius seldom rivalled – Cajori. It may be said to have created the calculus..... More
Item #5857

Manchester: S. Russell for R. Bickerstaff, Strand, London; Russell & Allen for R. Bickerstaff, Strand, London; executors of S. Russell for George Wilson; John Harrison, 1808-1810-1827; 1840. First edition, complete withall three parts inscribed by Dalton, and in original publisher’s bindings with original printed spine labels, of his classic work..... More
Item #5839

Florence: Condotta, 1674. The true first edition, very rare, signed and inscribed by Viviani to Edme Mariotte, of this important Galileanum, an assembly of previously unpublished writings by Galileo, together with texts by Torricelli and Viviani himself. Most importantly, it contains the first printing of a Galileo manuscript concerned with..... More
Item #5827

Milan: Imprimerie Bernardoni de C. Rebeschini, 1902. First edition, very rare, of “Lebesgue’s great thèse” (Burkill, p. 484), describing his new theory of integration, now known as the ‘Lebesgue integral’. “The Lebesgue integral is one of the great achievements of modern real analysis” (Britannica). “It cannot be doubted that this..... More
Item #5821

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

Paris: de l’Imprimerie Royale, chez Debure frères, 1823. First edition of the rarest of Cauchy’s three great textbooks, which placed “the fundamental principles of the calculus on a satisfactory foundation” (Smith, History of Mathematics II, p. 700). The Résumé, often referred to as the Calcul infinitésimal, is divided into 40..... More
Item #5815