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’ (Otto Neugebauer, ‘Notes on Hipparchus,’ Astronomy..... More
Item #3643

Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1874. First edition, rare, of the doctoral thesis of “the greatest woman mathematician prior to the twentieth century” (DSB) and the first woman in Europe to obtain a doctorate in mathematics. The thesis contains what is now called the ‘Cauchy-Kowalevsky’ theorem on the existence of solutions of..... More
Item #4203

Paris: Duprat, 1802. A fine copy of this influential text, which according to Babbage was "so perfect that any comment was unnecassary". "In discussing with a friend the formation of a section of the British and Foreign Bible Society, a society which had the distribution of Bibles as its mission..... More
Item #2252

Paris: H. Estienne & W. Hopyl, 27 June 1503. First edition of this very rare collection of works, in an attractive Roger Payne binding. The individual works are all first editions with the exception of Lefèvre’s Epitome of Boethius’ De arithmetica (first, 1496) and an unattributed Opusculum de p[r]axi numerorum..... More
Item #3866

Paris: Boudot, 1705. First edition, first issue, of Leibniz’s invention of binary arithmetic, the foundation of the electronic computer industry. This is the second of Leibniz’s great trilogy of works on mathematics and computation, following Nova methodus pro maximis et minimis (1684), his independent invention of calculus, and preceding Brevis..... More
Item #4824

London: Printed by John Baskett … And by the Assigns of Thomas Newcomb and Henry Hills, 1714. First edition, and a fine copy, of the Act of 1714 establishing a reward for the discovery of a method of determining longitude at sea. “An early example of a means adopted by a government for encouraging..... More
Item #4825

London: Printed for the author’s children and sold by A. Millar, et al. 1748. First edition, large-paper copy, of Maclaurin’s statement of Newtonian theory, one of the three “most outstanding popular introductions to Newtonian science of the eighteenth century” (I. B. Cohen, Franklin and Newton, 1956, p. 209). “Though a...... More
Item #3409

Edinburgh: Printed by T.W. and T. Ruddimans, 1742. First edition, a very fine large and thick paper copy, of “the earliest logical and systematic publication of the Newtonian methods. It stood as a model of rigor until the appearance of Cauchy’s Cours d’Analyse in 1821” (DSB). The Treatise was written..... More
Item #4222

Venice: Franciscum Franciscium Senensem, 1575. First and only edition (see Rara Aritmetica) of the first clear statement of the principle of mathematical induction. “Francesco Maurolico is generally recognized to have been one of the foremost mathematicians of the sixteenth century” (Rosen); Cajori has called him ‘the greatest geometer of the..... More
Item #2613

Leipzig: F.W. Vogel, 1909. First edition of Minkowski’s famous lecture on his theory of four-dimensional space-time, the first published account of this theory to be illustrated with ‘spacetime diagrams’, which were widely used later by Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose and others in the development of general relativity. “In ‘Space and..... More
Item #4418

Edinburgh; Padua: Andrew Hart; Giacomo Cadorino, 1619; [1667]. First edition, extremely rare, of this complement to Napier’s epoch-making Mirifici logorithmorum canonis descriptio (1614) – while the Descriptio gave the first ever table of logarithms, it was in the Constructio that Napier explained the method of their construction. It is here..... More
Item #4638

Cambridge / London: Typis Academicus / Benjamin Tooke, 1707. First edition of Newton’s treatise on algebra, or ‘universal arithmetic,’ his “most often read and republished mathematical work” (Whiteside). “Included are ‘Newton’s identities’ providing expressions for the sums of the ith powers of the roots of any polynomial equation, for any..... More
Item #4064

Antwerp: heirs of Arnold Birckman, 1567. Exceptionally fine copy, bound in citron morocco for Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617), of this rare and celebrated treatise on algebra. “Considered the greatest of Portuguese mathematicians, Nuñez reveals in his discoveries, theories, and publications that he was a first-rate geographer, physicist, cosmologist, geometer and..... More
Item #3645