[Brookhaven, NY: The American Physical Society], 1983. First edition, very rare offprint, and Hawking’s own file copy, of this famous paper describing the 'no-boundary proposal’ for the origin of the universe. “Stephen sought to understand the whole universe in scientific terms. As he said famously, ‘My goal is simple. It..... More
Item #5075
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
[London: Macmillan, 1974]. First edition, extremely rare offprint issue, and Hawking’s own file copy, of his most important article, predicting that black holes emit radiation, now known as ‘Hawking radiation’. This would cause relatively low mass black holes (less than 1012 kg) to ‘evaporate’ completely in a time less than..... More
Item #5076
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
[N.p. N.p., 1943-44]. Historic autograph letter from Werner Heisenberg (1901-76), the inventor of quantum mechanics and author of the famous uncertainty principle, to his fellow physicist and sometime collaborator Hendrik Anthony Kramers (1894-1952), discussing Heisenberg’s S-matrix approach to elementary particle physics and urging Kramers to collaborate with him on a...... More
Item #5304
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1922. First edition of Heisenberg’s first published paper, journal issue in original printed wrappers, 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..... More
Item #3527
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1928. First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, of Heisenberg’s solution of the problem of ferromagnetism, and a remarkable association copy linking two of the greatest figures in twentieth-century physics. Bohr and Heisenberg are also linked by the subject matter of the present work. In his..... More
Item #3526
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1929-30. First edition, journal issues in original printed wrappers, of this two-part paper which represents the “formal invention of quantum electrodynamics [QED]” (Miller, p. xiii). “Three years before the discovery of the positron Heisenberg and Pauli – in two papers ‘Zur Quantenmechanik der Wellenfelder’ and ‘Zur Quantenmechanik..... More
Item #2627
Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1882-1883. First edition, extremely rare author’s presentation offprints, of all three parts of one of the founding paper of chemical thermodynamics, along with Josiah Willard Gibbs’s 1876 paper ‘On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances.’ In these papers, Helmholtz introduced the concept of ‘free energy’ and proved..... More
Item #5192
Leipzig: Leopold Voss, 1856-60-66-67. First edition, and the only recorded copy in the original parts, of “the most important book on the physiology and physics of vision” (Grolier/Horblit), and “one of the greatest books on physiological optics” (Garrison-Morton). This work encompassed all previous research in the field, including the results..... More
Item #5275
Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1847. First edition, rare, of “the first comprehensive statement of the first law of thermodynamics: that all modes of energy, heat, light, electricity, and all chemical phenomena, are capable of transformation from one to the other but are indestructible and cannot be created” (PMM). “On the basis..... More
Item #4842
Berlin: Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1868. First edition, very rare, of Helmholtz’s famous and important contribution to non-Euclidean geometry, ‘On the facts which lay at the foundations of geometry’. “Motivated by his study of visual perception, throughout the mid-1860s Helmholtz investigated the most general analytic expressions of spatial relations. He..... More
Item #5428
Philadelphia: Printed by James Kay, Jun. & Brothers, 1839. First edition, author’s presentation offprint, of the third and most important part of Henry’s Contributions to Electricity and Magnetism. Following on from his discovery of electromagnetic self-induction in 1832, in the present paper Henry extends his results on ‘galvanic’ electricity (current..... More
Item #4282
Warsaw: Dziewulski, 1930. First edition, rare, and a fine copy in the original printed wrappers, of Herbrand’s doctoral dissertation, written in 1929 as a contribution to Hilbert’s programme. Bernays described Herbrand’s theorem as “the central theorem of predicate logic”, and van Heijenoort wrote that “[Frege’s] Begriffsschrift (1879), Löwenheim’s paper [‘Über..... More
Item #5040
Berlin: Verlag Öffentliches Leben, 1935. First edition, very rare offprint issue, of Hermann’s doctoral thesis. “In 1935 Hermann published an argument demonstrating an apparent flaw in John von Neumann’s 1932 proof which was widely claimed to show that a hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics was impossible. Hermann’s result went..... More
Item #5044
London: R. & J. E. Taylor, 1842. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of this seminal early work of photography, the invention of the world’s first photocopying process, ‘cyanotype,’ later called ‘blue-printing’; this remained by far the most important reprographic process for more than a century after the publication of Herschel’s..... More
Item #4782
London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1847. First edition, inscribed presentation copy, of Herschel’s greatest astronomical work, inscribed to the Captain of the ship that brought Herschel and his family back from South Africa. This is a monumental survey of the stars of the southern hemisphere, a complement to his father’s..... More
Item #5354
Berlin: Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1888. First edition, complete journal issue in original printed wrappers, of one of the two most important papers of Hertz’s on electromagnetic waves, in which he demonstrates for the first time that electromagnetic effects propagate at the speed of light (it was only a month later..... More
Item #5310
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
Florence: In officina Iuntarum, Bernardi filiorum, 1567. First edition, very rare, of the only surviving work of Hipparchus (c. 190-127 BC). “Even the most casual discussion of ancient astronomy will not fail to call Hipparchus of Nicaea in Bithynia ‘the greatest astronomer of antiquity’” (Neugebauer, p. 320). Our knowledge of..... More
Item #3643
London; Amsterdam: J. Windet and sold by S. Shorter; Jacob van Velsen for the author, [1598]; 1672. One of the most remarkable sammelbands from the Macclesfield library, containing the extremely rare first edition of the first published work on the ‘sector’, also called the ‘geometrical compass’ by Galileo who developed..... More
Item #4635
![Opera posthuma [Opuscula astronomica]; viz. Astronomia Kepleriana, defensa & promota. Excerpta ex...](/pictures/thumb/5368.jpg?v=1622713075)
London: W. Godbid for J. Martyn, 1672-73. First edition, very rare, of the principal published source of the short-lived “pride and boast of British astronomy,” as he was later described by Sir John Herschel. The works published here posthumously, edited by John Wallis, constitute almost all of Horrocks’ writings that..... More
Item #5368
Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1929. Extremely rare offprint issue of Hubble’s landmark paper which “made as great a change in man’s conception of the universe as the Copernican revolution 400 years before” (DSB). This paper “is generally regarded as marking the discovery of the expansion of the universe” (Biographical..... More
Item #5177
N.p. N.p, 1925-1943. A remarkable and comprehensive collection of offprints, including 15 by Hubble (1889-1953) and two by his assistant Milton Humason (1891-1972), tracing the evolving understanding of galaxies in the period 1925-43. The present volume contains all but two of the papers published in this period singled out for..... More
Item #5430