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

Paris: David l’ainé, 1744. First edition of this continuation of d’Alembert’s classic Traité de dynamique published in the previous year. “The ‘Treatise on Dynamics’ was d’Alembert’s first major book and it is a landmark in the history of mechanics. It reduces the laws of the motion of bodies to a...... More
Item #5320

Antwerp: Johannes Graphaeus for Arnold Birckman, 1533. First edition of Apianus’ cosmography to include Gemma’s highly important treatise on topographical triangulation, a landmark in the history of cartography – copies such as ours which are complete with all the volvelles are very rare. “The work that firmly established Apianus’ academic..... More
Item #5361

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

London, and Cambridge: Walton and Maberly; Macmillan & Co., 1854. First edition, the rare first issue, and a fine copy in original state, of Boole’s principal work, in which he gave the first detailed presentation of Boolean algebra. “Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) described The Laws of Thought as: the work in..... More
Item #5507

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, 1632. First edition, rare, of Cavalieri’s highly important treatise on conic sections and their applications in optics, acoustics and, perhaps most significantly, mechanics. Its importance in the history of the telescope is well-known: “Cavalieri’s design may well have been in all the essentials a direct anticipation of..... More
Item #5314

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 #5816

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: Melchior Mondiere, 1625. Very rare editio princeps of this important text by Euclid, his only work in pure geometry, other than the Elements, to have survived in Greek. It is here accompanied by a commentary, or rather an introduction, by Marinus of Naples (5th century AD), the pupil and..... More
Item #3427

St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1769-1770-1771. First edition, a beautiful copy in original wrappers, of Euler’s magnum opus on optics, “widely known and important in the physics of the eighteenth century,” which “laid the foundations of the calculation of optical systems” (DSB). “The Dioptricae presented a universal optics with..... More
Item #5225