Christiana: Groendahl, 1824. First edition of this “publication now considered one of the greatest rarities in mathematical literature” (Ore, p. 73), as well as one of the most famous. This is likely the only copy in private hands. It contains the first complete proof (albeit with some vagueness due to..... More
Item #5834
Paris: Imprimé par autorisation du roi a l’Imprimerie Royale, 1841. First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, of “the most important single result in the theory of integrals of algebraic functions … Abel’s theorem” (Bottazzini & Gray, p. 236), a result which Legendre called ‘a monument more lasting than..... More
Item #5458
[N.p. N.p., ca. 1780]. A fascinating manual of astronomy, particularly as it relates to the form of the motions of the heavens, dating from the period 1780-1825, probably from the beginning of that range. It is in a single hand (with the exception of one page), though with some variations..... More
Item #5309
Venice: Bernardinus Bindonus, 1537. First edition of any part of Apollonius’ Conics, “one of the greatest scientific books of antiquity” (Stillwell), alongside those of Euclid and Archimedes. “Apollonius’s theory of the conic sections (about 220 BC) is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of ancient mathematics and will remain one of..... More
Item #3075
[Colophon:] Venice: Bernardinus Bindonus, 1537. First edition, signed and heavily annotated by John Dee (1527–1608/9) during his Louvain residence in 1549, and acquired and signed eighty-two years later by John Winthrop Jr. (1606–1676), physician, alchemist, first Governor of Connecticut and the first colonial American elected Fellow of the Royal Society..... More
Item #5650
Cambridge: University Press, 1821. First edition, journal issue in never-bound sheets, of Babbage’s first and most important paper on mathematical notation, which was essential for his major mathematical invention, the calculus of functions. Babbage’s preoccupation with systems of notation found its most important expression in the development of his symbolic..... More
Item #6404
![Item #5962 Instauratio magna [Novum Organum]. Sir Francis BACON](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/5962.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1702292541)
London: Joannem Billium, 1620. First edition, first issue, the Devonshire–Horblit–Garden copy, and one of approximately fifteen copies printed on large paper with the crown watermark. Published in October 1620 with Norton’s name in the colophon, the first issue is of considerable rarity in any paper; the large-paper state in the..... More
Item #5962
London: printed for Jacob Tonson, 1734. First edition of Berkeley’s famous attack on the calculus of Newton and Leibniz, which the historian Florian Cajori described as “the most spectacular event of the century in the history of British mathematics” (History of the Calculus, p. 57), bound with Berkeley’s important Theory..... More
Item #6310
![Item #5535 Exercitationes quaedam mathematicae. Venice: Domenico Louvisa, 1724. [Bound with:]...](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/5535.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1646725325)
Venice: Domenico Louvisa; Gabriel Hertz & Giovanni Manfrè, 1724-27. Sammelband of four very rare works, all first editions, representing the work of the great Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli, and of those of his friends and adversaries, during the period 1723-25 he spent in Italy. Bernoulli’s Exercitationes is his first mathematical..... More
Item #5535
Basel: Mechel, [1687]. First edition, exceptionally rare, of this dissertation which Bernoulli (1655-1705) submitted in order to secure the chair of mathematics at the University of Basel. This was the beginning of a remarkable career in mathematics, in which he “greatly advanced algebra, the infinitesimal calculus, the calculus of variations..... More
Item #5601
Lausanne & Geneva: Marci-Michaelis Bousquet, 1742. REVISE First edition, the exceptionally fine Honeyman copy, complete with both portraits (often lacking), of the collected works of Johann I (Jean) Bernoulli. Virtually all of Bernoulli’s work was published in journals. “The first edition of Jean Bernoulli’s collected works brings together 189 of..... More
Item #6399
[Padua: 1719]. An autograph letter signed by Nikolaus I Bernoulli (1687–1759), in Latin, written from Padua on 29 April 1719 to the Scottish mathematician James Stirling, then in Venice — preserved undisturbed at the Stirling family seat of Garden House in Stirlingshire from the eighteenth century until 2025, the earliest..... More
Item #6655
Basel & London: 1729–1733. A four-document mathematical dossier, descended in the Stirling family at Garden House, Stirlingshire, from the eighteenth century down to the present generation. It preserves, in a single file, the full three-way exchange between Nikolaus I Bernoulli in Basel, James Stirling in London, and John Machin in..... More
Item #6656
Paris: De l’imprimerie Royale, chez Debure frères, 1821. First edition, an exceptionally fine copy, of this classic in the history of mathematics, which gives the first rigorous definitions of the notions of limit, continuity and convergence of infinite series, as well as the first comprehensive theory of functions of a...... More
Item #5345
Paris: de l’Imprimerie Royale, chez Debure frères, 1823. First edition of the rarest of Cauchy’s three great textbooks, which placed “the fundamental principles of the calculus on a satisfactory foundation” (Smith, History of Mathematics II, p. 700). The Résumé, often referred to as the Calcul infinitésimal, is divided into 40..... More
Item #5815
Bologna: Clemente Ferroni, 1635. First edition, exceptionally rare, of this landmark work in the history of mathematics, containing the discovery of the ‘method of indivisibles’, the most important intermediate step between the Archimedean ‘method of exhaustion’ and the integral calculus of Newton and Leibniz. This method is embodied in ‘Cavalieri's..... More
Item #6538
Bologna: Heirs of Evangelista Dozza, 1653. Second edition (first, 1635) of Cavalieri’s text containing the discovery of the ‘method of indivisibles’, one of the most important forerunners of the integral calculus. Book II of the work includes the statement of ‘Cavalieri's principle’ for the determination of areas and volumes, which..... More
Item #4202
Milan: Lodovico Monza, 1678. First edition, rare, of Ceva’s first and most important book. “Ceva’s most important mathematical work is De lineis rectis (Milan, 1678), dedicated to Ferdinando Carlo. Chasles mentions it with praise in his Aperçu historique. In this work Ceva used the properties of the center of gravity..... More
Item #5193
Rome: Imprimérie des Sciences Mathématiques, 1881; 1882. First edition, the rare offprint issues, of the most original mathematical work of the fifteenth century, indeed the most important since Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci almost three centuries earlier (a work which was also not published until the nineteenth century). Composed in 1484, but..... More
Item #4446
Paris: Nyon, Didot and Quillau, 1731. First edition, very rare, of Clairaut’s first publication, the first extended treatment of the geometry of curves in three dimensions, written when he was only sixteen. In it Clairaut demonstrates a claim made by Newton that all cubic curves in three dimensions are projections..... More
Item #5797
[Lyon]: Guillaume Huyon for Constantin Fradin, June 2, 1520. First edition, extremely rare, of the first published work on algebra in French. This is a fine copy in a beautiful contemporary binding. Born in Lyon, then the principal commercial centre of France, La Roche was a student of Nicolas Chuquet..... More
Item #4636
Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg, 1872. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Dedekind’s great work on the foundations of mathematics. “This short work [Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen] marks a significant epoch in the movement known as the arithmetization of analysis, that is, the replacement of intuitive geometric notions by concepts described..... More
Item #4558
Paris: Antoine Dezallier, 1679. First and only edition, incredibly rare, of the last (surviving) contribution published by the brilliant French mathematician Girard Desargues in the notorious ‘perspective wars’ – Desargues was “the greatest perspectivist and projective geometer of his generation” (Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 120). Desargues published his..... More
Item #5918
Leiden: Jan Maire, 1637. First edition of the founding text of modern philosophy, in a strictly contemporary Parisian armorial binding bearing the gilt quartered arms of Louis Hesselin (1602–1662) — maître ordinaire de la Chambre aux deniers, conseiller du Roi, and surintendant des plaisirs du Roi, choreographer of the court..... More
Item #5910
![Item #6346 Rerum Arithmeticarum Libri sex, quoru[m] primi duo adiecta habent scholia, maximi (ut...](https://sophiararebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/6346.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1733492018)
Basel: Eusebius Episcopius & Heirs of Nikolaus Episcopius, 1575. First edition of Diophantus — the first printing of the Arithmetica in any language in any form — owned, annotated, and signed by Giovanni Camillo Gloriosi (1572–1643), Galileo’s successor in the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua, and subsequently..... More
Item #6346