Edinburgh; London: Adam Black; Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1828-1929. First journal printing, in original never-bound sheets, of Robert Brown’s description of the molecular phenomenon later known as “Brownian motion,” one of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. It formed the basis for kinetic theory of gases..... More
Item #6573

Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt & Soner, 1904. First edition, extremely rare offprint issue, inscribed by the author to Fredholm, of von Koch’s paper, which contains the first examples of geometric fractals, the famous ‘Koch curve’ and ‘Koch snowflake’. The term ‘fractal’ was coined much later, by Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1975..... More
Item #3660

Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1967. First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, of Mandelbrot’s first paper on fractals (a term he coined in 1975). “Today Mandelbrot’s paper on the coast of Britain is famous in the history of mathematics” (historyofscience.com). “Mandelbrot had come across..... More
Item #5675

Toscolano: Paganino de’ Paganini, 20 December, 1523. Second edition, very rare, a close reprint of the first edition (Venice, 1494), and a copy with distinguished provenance. The Summa is a work of enormous importance on several levels. It is the first mathematical encyclopaedia of the Renaissance, “the first great general..... More
Item #5912

Washington: National Defense Research Committee, 1943-1944. First edition, very rare, of Wald’s seminal invention of 'Sequential analysis', developed while he was in charge of Columbia University’s Statistical Research Group in response to the demand for more efficient methods of industrial quality control during World War II. It is here offered..... More
Item #5180

[Washington, DC: National Defense Research Council], 1942. Extremely rare first edition of this classic work which laid the foundations of modern communication and control theory. “It has been the opinion of many that Wiener will be remembered for his Extrapolation long after Cybernetics is forgotten. Indeed few computer-science students would..... More
Item #5179