Leyden: Jean Maire, 1649. First separate edition of Descartes’s magnum opus (DSB), the invention of coordinate geometry and one of the key texts in the history of mathematics – this is an exceptional copy, uncut in the original interim boards. The Geometry was originally published in French as the third..... More about Geometria, aÌ Renato Des Cartes Anno 1637 GalliceÌ edita; nunc autem cum notis Florimondi De...
Item #4776

Basel: Eusebius & Heirs of Nikolaus Episcopius, 1575. First edition, very rare, of the first systematic treatise on algebra (Smith, Rara Arithmetica, p. 348), which “inspired the rebirth of number theory” (Britannica), translated from the Greek by Wilhelm Holtzmann [Xylander] – the original Greek text was not published until 1621... More about Rerum arithmeticarum libri sex, quoru[m] primi duo adiecta habent scholia, maximi (ut conjectura...
Item #4710

Paris: Melchior Mondiere, 1625. Very rare editio princeps of this important text by Euclid, his only work in pure geometry, other than the Elements, to have survived in Greek. It is here accompanied by a commentary, or rather an introduction, by Marinus of Naples (5th century AD), the pupil and... More about In Greek:] Deodomena kai Marinou Philosophou eis dedomena Eukleidou Hypomnema. Euclidis Data Opus...
Item #3427

St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1768-1772. First edition, in the original interim wrappers, of these letters to the Princess Friederike Charlotte Leopoldine Louise of Brandenburg-Schwedt, to whom Euler had given lessons during his stay in Berlin. The work “had an immense success and profoundly influenced contemporary philosophy” (PMM 196..... More about Lettres a une princesse d’Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique & de philosophie
Item #3992

Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1746; 1750; 1751. First edition, an outstanding copy uncut in the original boards, of Euler’s three-volume Opuscula varii argumenti (although only the first volume bears this title), a collection of thirteen tracts, all except one published here for the first time. The most important is the... More about Opuscula Varii Argumenti [Tomus I]; Conjectura Physica circa Propagationem soni ac luminis [Tomus...
Item #4420

Toulouse: Bernard Bosc, 1670. First edition, a fine copy, of Fermat’s annotated edition of Diophantus’ Arithmetica. This is the first printing of Fermat’s contributions to the theory of numbers, of which he is the undisputed founder, including his famous statement of ‘Fermat’s last theorem.’ Since most of Fermat’s work in..... More about Arithmeticorum libri sex, et de numeris multangulis liber unus. Cum commentariis C.G. Bacheti...
Item #4489

Jena: Hermann Pohle, 1891. First edition, very rare, of this important essay, in which Frege carried out a revision of his famous Begriffsschrift (1879), which was necessary in order to carry out his programme of reducing arithmetic to formal logic. Function und Begriff contains Frege’s two main innovations since the... More about Function und Begriff. Vortrag gehalten in der Sitzung von 9. Januar 1891 der Jeniaschen...
Item #3523

Leipzig: Gerh. Fleischer, 1801. First edition, rare, of Gauss’ masterpiece, “a book that begins a new epoch in mathematics … Gauss ranks, together with Archimedes and Newton, as one of the greatest geniuses in the history of mathematics” (PMM). “Published when Gauss was just twenty-four, Disquisitiones arithmeticae revolutionized number theory..... More about Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
Item #4572

Berlin: Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1828. First printing of what is now called the Gauss-Newton interpolation formula; which enables one to predict the value of a quantity given a finite number of observations. Gauss had lectured on the interpolation formula at Göttingen in 1812; his then student Encke attended Gauss’s..... More about Über Interpolation
Item #2983

Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1931; 1930. First edition, extremely rare author’s presentation offprint, of Gödel’s famous incompleteness theorem, “one of the major contributions to modern scientific thought” (Nagel & Newman). “Every system of arithmetic contains arithmetical propositions, by which is meant propositions concerned solely with relations between whole numbers, which can..... More about Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica undver wandter Systeme I. Offprint...
Item #4559

Warsaw: Dziewulski, 1930. A fine copy of his doctoral dissertation - a seminal work in mathematical logic (Van Heijenoort: From Frege to Gödel). “Herbrand gave early signs of his mathematical gifts, entering the École Normale Supérieure at the exceptional age of seventeen and ranking first in the entering class. He..... More about Thèses présentées à la Faculté des Sciences de Paris pour obtenir le grade de Docteur ès...
Item #2294

Berlin: Springer, 1925/1926. Very rare separate printing (WorldCat locates just two copies) of the most detailed exposition of Hilbert’s proposal for the foundation of classical mathematics, which became known as Hilbert’s Program. This paper further contains his attempted proof of the continuum hypothesis which led to the later work of..... More about Über das Unendliche
Item #3181

Leipzig: Teubner, 1901. First complete publication, extremely rare offprint issue, of Hilbert’s famous and enormously influential address to the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris in 1900 in which he set forth a list of twenty-three problems that he predicted would be of central importance to the advance of mathematics... More about Mathematische Probleme
Item #3656