Paris: David l’ainé, 1744. First edition of this continuation of d’Alembert’s classic Traité de dynamique published in the previous year. “The ‘Treatise on Dynamics’ was d’Alembert’s first major book and it is a landmark in the history of mechanics. It reduces the laws of the motion of bodies to a...... More
Item #5320

Antwerp: Johannes Graphaeus for Arnold Birckman, 1533. First edition of Apianus’ cosmography to include Gemma’s highly important treatise on topographical triangulation, a landmark in the history of cartography – copies such as ours which are complete with all the volvelles are very rare. “The work that firmly established Apianus’ academic..... More
Item #5361

Paris: de Bure Frères, 1829. First edition, very rare, of Cauchy’s important memoir on the determination of the real roots of polynomial equations. As stated in the ‘Avertissement’, this is a (separately-paginated) offprint from Cauchy’s Exercises de Mathématiques, Quatrième Année, 1829 (journal pagination 65-128). The problem of determining the real..... More
Item #4460

Rome: Imprimérie des Sciences Mathématiques, 1881; 1882. First edition, the rare offprint issues, of the most original mathematical work of the fifteenth century, indeed the most important since Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci almost three centuries earlier (a work which was also not published until the nineteenth century). Composed in 1484, but..... More
Item #4446

St. Petersburg: ex Typographia Academiae Scientiarum, 1739. First edition, and a remarkable copy in original state, of Euler’s most important work on music. The Swiss mathematician, scientist and philosopher Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) “contributed more to theoretical acoustics as the subject is now known than has any other man” (The New..... More
Item #5636

Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1824 & 1826. First printing of Fourier’s prize essay on Fourier series, and their application to the mathematical theory of heat, composed some five years before his epoch-making Théorie analytique de la chaleur. “The mathematical parts of this paper were expanded into Fourier’s most famous work, the Théorie analytique..... More
Item #5301

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

Berlin: Julius Springer, 1923. First edition, the extremely rare author’s presentation offprint issue, of the second major paper in the development of the 'Hilbert programme.' Based upon a lecture given at Leipzig in September 1923, it is the sequel to Hilbert's Neubegründung der Mathematik (1922), in which Hilbert had put forward his proposal..... More
Item #4475

Königsberg: Leupold, 1885. First edition, very rare, of Hilbert’s inaugural dissertation at the University of Königsberg, ‘On the invariant properties of special binary forms, in particular the spherical functions,’ in which he began his study of invariant theory. This subject was at the forefront of mathematics in the second half..... More
Item #4944

Linz: Hans Blanck, 1616. First edition, a considerably revised, rearranged and augmented version of Kepler’s Nova Stereometria published the year before, a work which is “generally regarded as one of the significant works in the prehistory of the calculus” (Gingerich in DSB). “Desiring to outfit his new household with the..... More
Item #5003

London: Printed by S[arah]. G[riffin]. and B[ennet]. G[riffin]. for Benjamin Tooke and Thomas Sawbridge, [1669]. First edition, first issue, extremely rare, of the first of Leybourn’s books on the subject. This issue has ‘dialling:’ in line 2 of the title and lacks imprint date; the more common (but still rare)..... More
Item #4610

London: for William and John Innys, 1720. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Maclaurin’s first book, dedicated to Newton and bearing his imprimatur as president of the Royal Society. Maclaurin is best known for his Treatise of Fluxions (1742), “the earliest logical and systematic publication of the Newtonian methods..... More
Item #5542

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