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

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

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

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

Basel: Eusebius & Heirs of Nikolaus Episcopius, 1575. First edition, very rare, of the first systematic treatise on algebra (Smith, Rara Arithmetica, p. 348), which “inspired the rebirth of number theory” (Britannica), translated from the Greek by Wilhelm Holtzmann [Xylander] – the original Greek text was not published until 1621..... More
Item #4710

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

Lausanne & Geneve: Marcum-Michaelem Bosquet & Socios, 1744. First edition of “Euler’s most valuable contribution to mathematics in which he developed the concept of the calculus of variations” (Norman). “’This work displays an amount of mathematical genius seldom rivalled – Cajori. It may be said to have created the calculus..... More
Item #5857