Paris: Chez l'autheur, 1663. Rare first edition of this very important chemistry text, which went through some thirteen editions between 1663 and 1710. It is one of the earliest attempts to strip chemistry from its alchemical mysticism and to describe chemical preparations in an unambiguous manner. "The work is divided..... More
Item #3412
![A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes [with:] Liquid Propellant Rocket Development. Robert...](/pictures/thumb/4854a.jpg?v=1593537672)
Washington D.C. Smithsonian Institution, 1919 & 1936. First edition, presentation copies in the original printed wrappers, inscribed by Goddard, and with a highly important association, of the most influential early works on rocketry, which provided the foundation for the modern space age. “Having explored the mathematical practicality of rocketry since..... More
Item #4854
Leipzig & Berlin: B.G. Teubner & F. Deuticke, 1931-1937. First editions, and a fine complete set in the original printed wrappers, of all eight issues of these proceedings to which Gödel contributed thirteen important papers and remarks on the foundations of logic and mathematics. The last three issues are particularly..... More
Item #4846
Berlin: Springer, 1926. First edition of Gordon’s account of the ‘Klein-Gordon equation’ (‘KG equation’ in what follows), the first attempt at unifying wave mechanics with special relativity. The KG equation was discovered by several authors independently, the first being the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein, although the equation appeared only incidentally..... More
Item #4497
[Leyden]: in bibliopolio Commeliniano sumptibus viduae Joannis Comelini, 1620. First edition, extremely rare, of one of the earliest modern works on atomism. “Gorlaeus is counted among the founders of modern atomism, which he proposed as an alternative to Aristotelian matter theory. Because of his notion of atomic compounds, he is..... More
Item #4573
Naples: Matthaeus Nuccius, 1627. First Italian edition, very rare, of Grassi’s counter-polemic against Galileo’s Il saggiatore (1623). This is the concluding work in the series of publications which document the “controversy of the comets,” one of the most infamous polemics in the history of science. According to Drake, these texts..... More
Item #4009
Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1702. A fine copy of the first text book of astronomy based on Newtonian principles, which contains the first printings of Newton's lunar theory and his "classical scholia". Babson 71; Gray 87. "The nephew of James Gregory, the mathematician, and the son of the Laird of Kinnairdie..... More
Item #2221
Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1695. First edition of this rare work, famous today for its suggestion that an achromatic compound lens might be formed by combining simples lenses of different media. The use of ‘achromatic doublets’ was a crucial step in the further development of telescopes and microscopes. From Marischal College..... More
Item #3190
Bologna: heirs of Vittorio Benacci for Girolamo Bernia, 1665. First edition, rare, of Grimaldi’s only book, in which he describes his discovery of the diffraction of light, “a new mode of transmission of light [that] contradicts the notion of an exclusively rectilinear passage of light” (DSB). This is perhaps the..... More
Item #3397
Amsterdam: Johanned Jansson Waesberge, 1672. First edition of this book “of prime importance in electrical discovery, air-pressure and the vacuum pump.” The Experimenta nova (1672) ranks next to Gilbert’s De magnete (1611) in the number and importance of electrical discoveries described” (Sparrow). ❧Dibner, Heralds of Science 55; Evans, First Editions..... More
Item #3763
Paris: Pierre Gaultier, 30 April 1544. First edition, an exceptionally fine, large and fresh copy, completely unsophisticated, of one of the most beautiful scientific books of the Renaissance, which well deserves the praise lavished on it by Herrlinger, who calls it “a typographically exquisite specimen of Parisian printing craft” and..... More
Item #5010
Nuremberg: printed by Christoph Gerhard for Paulus Fürst, 1666. First edition of one of the most beautiful instrument books published in the seventeenth century and certainly one of the rarest, particularly with the full complement of plates. This work is an enlargement, by his student Sturm, of Habrecht’s famous treatise..... More
Item #4705
![‘Uber das Zerplatzen des Urankernes Durch Langsame Neutronen.’ [TOGETHER WITH:] HAHN,...](/pictures/thumb/4152.jpg?v=1593078597)
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter und Co., 1939 [1942, 1944]. First edition, offprint issues, of the three fundamental papers on nuclear fission which eventually lead to the creation of the atom bomb. “…experiments conducted in 1938 at Berlin by Hahn and Strassman [sic] were reported to Lise Meitner, an Austrian scientist..... More
Item #4152
London: Printed by T. and J.W. Pasham, in Black-Friars, and sold by the booksellers, in London and Westminster, 1763. First edition, extremely rare, of Harrison’s announcement of his invention and testing of his first accurate chronometer, the famous ‘sea-watch’ later called H4, which solved the problem of determining longitude at..... More
Item #4994
Paris: J. Anisson, 1694. First edition, rare, of Hartsoeker's first and most important work, in which he reviewed the principles of optics as far as they were known by the end of the 17th century. In addition to the physics of light and the physiology of vision, the book also..... More
Item #4518
Leyden: Johann Maire, 1639. Third, but second complete, edition of the single most important and famous medical book ever published, containing Harvey’s discovery and experimental proof of the circulation of the blood, which created a revolution in physiology comparable to the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Harvey’s discovery was to become..... More
Item #3607
London: William Dugard, for Octavian Pulleyn, 1651. John Evelyn’s copy, and possibly the unique copy containing the portrait of Harvey, of the first edition of “the most important book on [embryology] to appear during the seventeenth century” (Garrison-Morton). In this work, “he rejected the prevailing doctrine of the preformation of..... More
Item #4785
Rotterdam: Arnold Leers, 1648. First edition of the Exercitationes, one of two issues published simultaneously (see below), of this rare and important work, a defence of his theory of the circulation of the blood against the Parisian physician Jean Riolan the younger. It is here bound after the first Rotterdam..... More
Item #3630
Paris: Gogué & Née de la Rochelle, 1784. First edition of Haüy’s first printed book, an exceptionally fine copy, very rare in this condition. “The foundation of the mathematical theory of crystal structure. Haüy proposed six types of primary crystal forms (parallelpiped, rhombic dodecahedron, hexagonal dipyramid, right hexagonal prism, octahedron..... More
Item #4871
Berlin: Springer, 1926. First edition of the explanation of the anomalous Zeeman effect on the basis of matrix mechanics. “By including the spin property of the electron, Heisenberg and Jordan obtained perhaps the greatest triumph of matrix mechanics: they were able to derive all observed phenomena connected with the anomalous..... More
Item #3528
Berlin: Springer, 1943; 1943; 1944. First edition of Heisenberg’s S-matrix approach to the study of elementary particles, complete in three parts (a fourth part was written but not published). Although S-matrix theory was abandoned after the War due to the success of quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics, it again became..... More
Item #3530
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1922. First edition of Heisenberg’s first published paper, describing his ‘core model’ of the atom and its application to solve the problems of the multiplet structure in atomic spectra and the anomalous Zeeman effect, which had defeated all previous attempts. “Just a year after entering Sommerfeld’s program..... More
Item #3527
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1928. A remarkable association copy, from the library of Niels Bohr, of Heisenberg’s solution of the problem of ferromagnetism. Bohr and Heisenberg are also linked by the subject matter of the present work. In his doctoral thesis Studier over Metallernes Elektrontheori (1911), Bohr proved what was later..... More
Item #3526
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1929-30. A fine set, in the original wrappers, of the two papers in which Heisenberg and Pauli gave “for the first time the foundations for quantum electrodynamics in the way we know it today.” (Abraham Pais). “Three years before the discovery of the positron Heisenberg and Pauli..... More
Item #2627
Berlin: A. Förstner, 1851. First edition, an exceptionally fine copy in original printed wrappers, of this famous work which describes Helmholtz’s announcement of his invention of the ophthalmoscope, one of the most important clinical tools in medicine, which greatly improved the ability of ophthalmologists to diagnose eye disease and revolutionized..... More
Item #4855