Nuremberg: Anton Koberger for Sebald Schreyer, July 12, 1493. First edition, and a remarkable wide-margined complete copy, preserved in its original binding bearing the city of Vienna’s coat of arms, of the first illustrated encyclopedia. Published in 1493, at the dawn of the discovery period, in Nuremberg by Europe’s largest..... More
Item #5643
Utrecht: Merinardus van Dreunen, 1669. First edition, extremely rare large paper copy, from the library of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, of Swammerdam’s important entomological work in which he “sketched the general outlines of an entirely new theory of the generation of all insects. He vehemently attacked axioms that were three centuries old..... More
Item #5447
London: Cambridge University Press for the Royal Society, [1952]. First edition of the extremely rare true offprint (without price to front wrapper), of Turing’s last major published work, which was “in every respect ahead of its time” (Copeland, p. 510). Taking his cue from the zoologist D’Arcy Thompson, who held..... More
Item #5612
London: Macmillan, 1966. First edition, very rare offprint, of this landmark paper elucidating the history and mechanism of continental drift by “one of the most imaginative Earth scientists of his generation” (DSB). “In 1966, J. Tuzo Wilson published ‘Did the Atlantic Close and then Re-Open?’ in the journal Nature. The..... More
Item #4582
London: Printed for Thomas Bennet … and Daniel Brown … and are to be had of Mr. Hunt at the Repository in Gresham-College, 1699. First edition, and a fine, tall copy, of “Tyson’s anatomy of the ‘Orang-outang’ (actually a young chimpanzee), which was the first work to demonstrate scientifically the..... More
Item #5291
Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1912. First edition, journal issues in the original printed wrappers. “Wegener is remembered today as the originator and one of the chief proponents of the theory of continental drift, which he conceived after being struck by the apparent correspondence in the shapes of the coastlines on the..... More
Item #4417
Leipzig: Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, 1774. First edition, rare, of Werner’s first published work and the first modern textbook of descriptive mineralogy (the ‘fossils’ in the title refer to anything removed from the ground). “Although Werner is best known for his contribution to the founding of geology as a science, he..... More
Item #5615