Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1888. A remarkable collection of offprints documenting Marey’s foundational contributions to the science of cinematography. Marey was “the lead character in the birth of scientific cinema” (Tosi, p. 82); he “was the first to use a single camera to produce photographs on a strip of sensitized film in..... More
Item #5494

London & Cambridge: Macmillan, 1871. First edition, extremely rare, of Maxwell's inaugural lecture as Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, which marks the beginning of the tradition of experimental research at the Cavendish Laboratory, a tradition which was to lead to 29 Nobel Prizes being awarded to..... More
Item #4958

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

Pesaro; Bologna: apud Hieronymum Concordiam; Costantino Pisarri, 1588 [colophon, 1587]; 1711. First edition, the beautiful Macclesfield copy, of Guidobaldo’s Paraphrasis, the important companion to his Mechanicorum liber (1577), regarded as the greatest work on statics since the Greeks, which employed the mathematically rigorous proofs of Archimedes to the investigation of..... More
Item #4716

Leipzig & Berlin: Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig & Springer, 1869-1921. A remarkable collection of offprints, a major portion of the published works of Carl Gottfried Neumann (1832-1925), representing virtually all of the areas to which he contributed, most importantly the related fields of electromagnetism and potential theory. His lasting..... More
Item #4934

London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley, 1756. First printing, very rare, of these letters of Newton which Koyré has described as “one of the most precious and important documents for the study and interpretation of Newtonian thought” (Koyré, Newtonian Studies (1965), p. 202). Newton here gives his views on..... More
Item #3537

London: Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, at the Prince’s Arms in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1704. First edition, first issue, and a superlative copy, presented by Newton to his close friend and collaborator Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, with an inscription recording the gift in..... More
Item #5080

Paris: Bachelier, 1835. First edition, presentation copy inscribed by Poisson to Marie Jean Pierre Flourens, of this classic work on the mathematical theory of heat conduction. “Poisson scored a point in this work by demonstrating how the conductibility of heat in the interior of bodies, far from being contained in..... More
Item #5242

Paris: Antoine Bertier, 1644. First edition, exceptionally rare, of Roberval’s cosmology, in which he expresses, covertly, his support for Copernicus, and also formulates for the first time the law of universal attraction – that any two material bodies in the universe attract each other. This principle is normally ascribed to..... More
Item #5431

Important letter from Rutherford to Charles Herman Viol requesting information about the production of radium, in preparation for a series of lectures he was to deliver at The Royal Institution. “From 1921, when he succeeded [J. J.] Thomson, until his death, Rutherford was professor of natural philosophy at the Royal..... More
Item #3663

Ingolstadt: Eder for Elisabeth Angermaria, 1614 & 1615. First edition, in a beautiful contemporary binding, of Scheiner’s very rare work containing the second earliest map of the moon – but the first to give topographical details – as well as the first illustrations of a telescope. It builds upon Scheiner’s..... More
Item #4126

Venice: Giovanni Padovano for Curzio Troiano Navò, 1550. First edition of Tartaglia’s Quesiti, second edition of the other two works. The Quesiti continues the discussion of ballistics in Tartaglia’s Nova scientia (first published in 1537), pointing out for the first time that the trajectory of a projectile is curved throughout..... More
Item #4938

Amsterdam: Etienne Ledet et Compagnie, 1738. First edition, first issue, extremely rare large and thick paper copy, and in a beautiful contemporary binding, of Voltaire's only scientific work. “Owing to Descartes' great influence and Newton’s dispute with Leibnitz, the spread of his [Newton’s] thought on the continent took about fifty..... More
Item #4104