St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1769-1771. First edition, and a very fine copy, of Euler’s rare work on optics, ‘widely known and important in the physics of the eighteenth century’ and which ‘laid the foundations of the calculation of optical systems’ (DSB). The first volume presents his general theory..... More
Item #3300

St. Petersburg: Academiae Imperialis Scientiarum, 1755. First edition, rare, of the second part of Euler’s monumental trilogy on analysis, “the first textbook on the differential calculus which has any claim to be regarded as complete” (Rouse Ball, p. 368). “In 1755 Euler published another masterwork in mathematics, his two-part Institutiones..... More
Item #5321

Lausanne: M.-M. Bousquet, 1748. First edition, entirely untouched in the printer's interim boards, the finest copy we have seen, of Euler’s great textbook on analysis, the only work of Euler listed in Printing and the Mind of Man. “In his ‘Introduction to Analysis’ Euler did for modern analysis what Euclid..... More
Item #5226

St. Petersburg: Academia Imperialis Scientiarum, 1783-85. First edition, rare, of this collection of 28 previously unpublished papers by Euler, the majority of which deal with topics in number theory (e.g., papers 3, 5, 7-11, 14, 19 – see the listing below), of which the most important is ‘Observationes circa divisionem..... More
Item #3318

St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1770. First edition in German, its language of composition, and first obtainable edition, of Euler’s ‘Complete instruction in algebra’, which takes the reader step-by-step from the basics, including negative and imaginary numbers, through to the solution of quadratic, cubic and biquadratic equations, and concluding..... More
Item #5122

Toulouse: Bernard Bosc, 1670. First edition, the superb Macclesfield copy printed on large and thick paper and with the engraved frontispiece portrait of Fermat (intended only for the few large paper copies), of Fermat’s annotated edition of Diophantus’ Arithmetica. This is the first printing of Fermat’s contributions to the theory..... More
Item #5170

Paris: Firmin Didot, 1822. First edition of the first mathematical study of heat diffusion, the first major mathematization of a branch of physics outside mechanics. “This work marks an epoch in the history of both pure and applied mathematics. It is the source of all modern methods in mathematical physics..... More
Item #3841

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
Item #3523

Göttingen: Dieterich, 1818. First edition, very rare separately-paginated offprint, preceding the journal appearance in Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis (vol. 4, pp. 21-48) by two years. “In his first years at Göttingen, Gauss experienced a second upsurge of ideas and publications in various fields of mathematics. Among the latter were several..... More
Item #5312

Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes and I.H. Besser, 1809. First edition of the work which, “with the Disquisitiones [Arithmeticae, 1801], established his reputation as a mathematical and scientific genius of the first order” (DSB). “The Theoria motus will always be classed among those great works the appearance of which forms an epoch..... More
Item #5365

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

Leipzig & Berlin: B.G. Teubner & F. Deuticke, 1931-1937. First editions, and a fine complete set in the original printed wrappers, of all eight issues of these proceedings to which Gödel contributed thirteen important papers and remarks on the foundations of logic and mathematics. The last three issues are particularly..... More
Item #4846

London: printed by W. Bulmer [for the Royal Society], 1814. Very rare separately-paginated offprint of Herschel’s account of the ‘calculus of operations,’ which formed a major part of the programme of reform promoted by the group of Cambridge mathematicians (which included Babbage and Herschel) who called themselves the ‘Analytical Society.’..... More
Item #4283