Venice: Bernardinus Bindonus, 1537. First edition of any part of Apollonius’ Conics, “one of the greatest scientific books of antiquity” (Stillwell), alongside those of Euclid and Archimedes. “Apollonius’s theory of the conic sections (about 220 BC) is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of ancient mathematics and will remain one of..... More
Item #3075

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

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

Paris: Antoine Dezallier, 1679. First and only edition, incredibly rare, of the last (surviving) contribution published by the brilliant French mathematician Girard Desargues in the notorious ‘perspective wars’ – Desargues was “the greatest perspectivist and projective geometer of his generation” (Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 120). Desargues published his..... More
Item #5918

Castres: F. Barcouda, 1664. First edition in French, very rare, of two works by Castelli and Torricelli which founded the modern science of hydraulics, and including an original contribution by Fermat which is published for the first time in this work – only two other scientific works of Fermat were..... More
Item #5780

Paris: Estienne Michallet, 1676. First edition, very rare, Henry Cavendish’s copy, of this early treatise on number theory, containing results Frenicle had probably obtained by correspondence with Fermat, including the proof of the first case of Fermat’s last theorem to be published. “During the first half of the seventeenth century..... More
Item #6170

Leipzig & Berlin: B.G. Teubner & F. Deuticke, 1931-37. First editions, a very rare complete set in the original printed wrappers, of all eight issues of these proceedings to which Gödel contributed thirteen important papers and remarks on the foundations of logic and mathematics. The last three issues are particularly..... More
Item #5970

Berlin: Julius Springer, 1923. First edition, the extremely rare author’s presentation offprint issue, of the second major paper in the development of the 'Hilbert programme.' Based upon a lecture given at Leipzig in September 1923, it is the sequel to Hilbert's Neubegründung der Mathematik (1922), in which Hilbert had put forward his proposal..... More
Item #4475

[Berlin: Springer, 1925]. First edition, very rare offprint, of this famous lecture which contains Hilbert’s most detailed exposition of his proposal for the foundation of classical mathematics, which became known as Hilbert’s Programme. “No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us,” Hilbert famously declared..... More
Item #3181

Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt & Soner, 1904. First edition, extremely rare offprint issue, inscribed by the author to Fredholm, of von Koch’s paper, which contains the first examples of geometric fractals, the famous ‘Koch curve’ and ‘Koch snowflake’. The term ‘fractal’ was coined much later, by Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1975..... More
Item #3660

Paris: H. Estienne & W. Hopyl, 27 June 1503. First edition of this very rare collection of works, in an attractive Roger Payne binding. The individual works are all first editions with the exception of Lefèvre’s Epitome of Boethius’ De arithmetica (first, 1496) and an unattributed Opusculum de p[r]axi numerorum..... More
Item #3866

London: for William and John Innys, 1720. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Maclaurin’s first book, dedicated to Newton and bearing his imprimatur as president of the Royal Society; this is a presentation copy, inscribed by Maclaurin. Maclaurin is best known for his Treatise of Fluxions (1742), “the earliest..... More
Item #5250

Edinburgh: Printed by T.W. and T. Ruddimans, 1742. First edition, a very fine large and thick paper copy, of “the earliest logical and systematic publication of the Newtonian methods. It stood as a model of rigor until the appearance of Cauchy’s Cours d’Analyse in 1821” (DSB). The Treatise was written..... More
Item #4222