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

Lyon: Chez les Frères Perisse … et se trouve à Paris chez la veuve Perise … et chez Duprat … An II, 1802. First edition, very rare, of Ampère’s first published work, a treatise on the theory of games “noted for its elegant and polished, though simple, application of the..... More
Item #5378

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

London: printed for Jacob Tonson, 1734. First edition, a spectacular copy, and one of the first issued (see below), 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”..... More
Item #5457

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: Plassan, 1822. First edition, extremely rare separately-paginated offprint (journal pagination 161-174), inscribed by Cauchy (1789-1857) to his senior colleague Sylvestre François Lacroix (1765-1843). In this paper Cauchy published for the first time many of the most important results of his great work Mémoire sur les intégrales définies, submitted to..... More
Item #4279

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

Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins, 1936. First edition of the first proof that the Entscheidungsproblem (‘decision problem’) is unsolvable, published seven months before Alan Turing published his own independent proof in his paper ‘On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.’ Church’s proof was via his ‘lambda-calculus’; Turing’s was via..... More
Item #4543

[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

Leyden: Jean Maire, 1649. First separate edition of Descartes’s magnum opus (DSB), the invention of coordinate geometry and one of the key texts in the history of mathematics – this is an exceptional copy, uncut in the original interim boards. The Geometry was originally published in French as the third..... More
Item #4776

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

London: William Pickering, 1847. First edition, rare in the original publisher’s cloth, of “the most attractive edition of Euclid the world has ever seen” (Werner Oechslin, in an essay to the Taschen reprint, Cologne: 2010), in which colours are substituted for the usual letters to designate the angles and lines..... More
Item #5516