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

Kazan: Universitetskai︠a︡ tip. 1835. First edition, incredibly rare offprint, of this important book-length memoir on the foundations of calculus and real analysis by the first inventor of non-euclidean geometry. “As early as 1835, Lobachevsky showed in a memoir [the offered work] the necessity of distinguishing between continuity and differentiability” (Cajori..... More
Item #3652

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

Hambourg [i.e., Leiden]: [Élie Luzac], 1753. First edition, rare, of this collection of pamphlets relating to the ‘König affair,’ the celebrated polemic on the principle of least action, “perhaps the ugliest of all the famous scientific disputes” (DSB VII: 442). This is an exceptional association copy, from the library of..... More
Item #5306

Pesaro: Girolamo Concordia, 1579. First edition, very rare, the Jones-Macclesfield copy, signed by William Jones, of the first modern theoretical treatise on the planisphere, an instrument for representing the celestial sphere on a plane surface. Guidobaldo was one of the most prominent figures in the renaissance of the mathematical sciences..... More
Item #5426

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

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956. First edition of Nash’s most famous work in pure mathematics, his solution of “a deep philosophical problem concerning geometry”, first posed by Bernhard Riemann, “one of the most important pieces of mathematical analysis in this century” which “has completely changed the perspective on partial differential..... More
Item #3536

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 integer i...... More
Item #4639

London: Allde, for Astley, 1562 [i.e., 1592]. Third edition (first, 1581) of one of the greatest rarities in the entire literature of navigation and magnetism, and “one of the first truly scientific books published in England” (Waters, The Art of Navigation, p. 153). “It is usual to ascribe to Galileo..... More
Item #4986

Pesaro: Girolamo Concordia, 1588. First edition of Pappus' Collection, translated with commentary by Federico Commandino, a princely copy from the notable collection of the great Papal family and patrons of learning, the Piccolomini, Dukes of Amalfi, thence by marriage to the German nobleman von Troilo. The Collection is “by far..... More
Item #5234

Cologne [Paris]: Pierre de la Vallée, [1656-]1657; 1659. First edition, and a beautiful copy, of Pascal’s 18 Provincial letters, bound with two extremely rare works relating to Pascal. “The Lettres Provinciales, as they are called, are the first example of French prose as we know it today, perfectly finished in..... More
Item #3426

Paris: Gauthier-Villars et Fils, 1892. First edition of Poincaré’s first paper on topology, which gave birth to the subject in its modern sense. “One of the most unexpected developments in twentieth-century mathematics has been the meteoric rise of the subject known as topology. Topology is sometimes described as ‘rubber-sheet geometry’..... More
Item #3776