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
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
[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
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
Prague: Gottlieb Haase, 1817. First edition, extremely rare, of this epoch-making paper in the history of mathematics, the first to provide a rigorous foundation for the calculus. “The main mathematical achievements of the paper include: (a) the formal definition of the continuity of a function of one real variable, correctly..... More
Item #4362
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 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 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
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
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
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
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
![Larismethique nouellement composee par maistre Estienne de La Roche dict Villefra[n]che natif de...](/pictures/thumb/4636.jpg?v=1592229754)
[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
![Rerum arithmeticarum libri sex, quoru[m] primi duo adiecta habent scholia, maximi (ut conjectura...](/pictures/thumb/4710.jpg?v=1592229912)
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
![In Greek:] Deodomena kai Marinou Philosophou eis dedomena Eukleidou Hypomnema. Euclidis Data Opus...](/pictures/thumb/3427.jpg?v=1592228675)
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
Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 25th May 1482. First edition, Lewis Carroll’s copy, of the “oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today” (PMM), This book “has exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible” (DSB). Euclid’s Elements is the only work of..... More
Item #5355
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
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
![Institutionun calculi integralis. Volumen primum [secundum, tertium]. Leonhard EULER](/pictures/thumb/5364.jpg?v=1622713058)
St. Petersburg: Academiae Imperialis Scientiarum, 1768-69-70. First edition, very rare when complete with the folding plate, of the third part of Euler’s monumental trilogy on analysis, following his Introductio in analysis infinitorum (1748) and Institutiones calculi differentialis (1755). “They were not didactic works in the sense that they did not..... More
Item #5364
St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1768-1772. First edition, in the original interim wrappers, of these letters to the Princess Friederike Charlotte Leopoldine Louise of Brandenburg-Schwedt, to whom Euler had given lessons during his stay in Berlin. The work “had an immense success and profoundly influenced contemporary philosophy” (PMM 196..... More
Item #3992
![Opuscula Varii Argumenti [Tomus I]; Conjectura Physica circa Propagationem soni ac luminis [Tomus...](/pictures/thumb/4420.jpg?v=1592229281)
Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1746; 1750; 1751. First edition, an outstanding copy uncut in the original boards, of Euler’s three-volume Opuscula varii argumenti (although only the first volume bears this title), a collection of thirteen tracts, all except one published here for the first time. The most important is the..... More
Item #4420
![Vollständige Anleitung zur Algebra. Erster [- Zweiter] Theil. Leonhard EULER](/pictures/thumb/5122.jpg?v=1604575666)
St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1770. First edition in German, its language of composition, and first obtainable edition, of Euler’s ‘Complete instruction in algebra’, which takes the reader step-by-step from the basics, including negative and imaginary numbers, through to the solution of quadratic, cubic and biquadratic equations, and concluding..... More
Item #5122