Paris: Imprimé par autorisation du roi a l’Imprimerie Royale, 1841. First edition, journal issue, 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 bronze’. It can be..... More
Item #5197

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

Basle: Joannes Hervagius, 1544. First edition of one of the key scientific books of the Renaissance, representing a decisive step forward in the history of mathematics, containing the first printings of the majority of the surviving works of the greatest mathematician, physicist and engineer of antiquity. This book constitutes “the..... More
Item #5171

Cambridge: Macmillan, Barclay & Macmillan, 1847. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Boole’s first book, the birth of modern symbolic logic and the first presentation of ‘Boolean algebra’ – this is the copy of the great economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946). “Boole’s work also contains what Bertrand Russell called..... More
Item #4294

Paris: de Bure Frères, 1829. First edition, very rare, of Cauchy’s important memoir on the determination of the real roots of polynomial equations. As stated in the ‘Avertissement’, this is a (separately-paginated) offprint from Cauchy’s Exercises de Mathématiques, Quatrième Année, 1829 (journal pagination 65-128). The problem of determining the real..... More
Item #4460

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

[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

St. Petersburg: Academiae Imperialis Scientiarum, 1755. First edition, rare, of the second part of Euler’s monumental trilogy on analysis, “the first textbook on the differential calculus which has any claim to be regarded as complete” (Rouse Ball, p. 368). “In 1755 Euler published another masterwork in mathematics, his two-part Institutiones..... More
Item #5321

Lausanne: M.-M. Bousquet, 1748. First edition, entirely untouched in the printer's interim boards, the finest copy we have seen, of Euler’s great textbook on analysis, the only work of Euler listed in Printing and the Mind of Man. “In his ‘Introduction to Analysis’ Euler did for modern analysis what Euclid..... More
Item #5226