Search Results: Authors starting with C from SOPHIA RARE BOOKS

Ferrara: Francesco Suzzi, 1629. First edition. UNIQUE PRE-PUBLICATION PRESENTATION COPY. First edition, a unique pre-publication presentation copy by Cabeo to his teacher Jacobo Corrado, of the first extensive study of magnetism since William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600). Corrado's name is handwritten on the title page, which is in an unfinished state, the coat-of-arms at the head having been left un-engraved; in addition, there is an eleven-line manuscript dedication on the second leaf, which is blank but usually contains the Privilege of the Emperor Charles V. In the dedication Cabeo thanks his teacher and praises him for his vast knowledge. "His first book, the Philosophia magnetica, discussed not only Gilbert's but also Cabeo's own experimental investigations of terrestrial magnetism as well as magnetized iron and 'lodestone' (the mineral magnetite). The central focus of his work, like Gilbert's before him, was therefore the study of the magnetic behaviors of compass needles. Where Gilbert,… Read More

Paris: Jacques Villery, 1643. First edition. CARDANO'S FAMOUS (AND INFAMOUS) AUTOBIOGRAPHY - THE FIRST WORK OF PSYCHOANALYSIS? First edition, extremely rare, of one of the most famous autobiographies of all time. Girolamo Cardano, famous and influential Italian humanist and natural philosopher, supposedly wrote or at least finished his autobiography after 1570, when the Inquisition had arrested him, he was forced to spend some months under arrest, to step back from his position at the university of Bologna and move to Rome. Modelling his account on the works of ancient biographers, especially on Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars, Cardano does not offer a pure autobiography in chronological order, but rather structures the work on different aspects of himself to depict his whole character: starting with his origin, his parents, his birth and a short summary of his most important life events, the author goes on to focus on his physical appearance, his health and physical activities, a quite unflattering… Read More

Modena: Bartolomeo Soliani, 1653. First edition. CASSINI'S EXTREMELY RARE FIRST PUBLISHED WORK - PROVING THAT COMETS ARE CELESTIAL PHENOMENA. First edition, exceptionally rare, of the remarkable first publication of the great observational astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini, in which he demonstrated for the first time by observing their parallax that comets are celestial phenomena and not, as Aristotle had claimed, ignited exhalations from the earth (the comet is now designated C/1652 Y1). We have been unable to trace any other copy of this work in commerce, and only a handful of institutional copies. In 1652, just before Christmas, a comet was observed approaching the Earth, and it remained visible through the first week of January 1653. Cassini was then a guest in the astronomical observatory of his patron, the Marquis Cornelio Malvasia, inside the Villa di Panzano, near Castelfranco Emilia. Here, together with Malvasia and, occasionally, the Duke of Modena, Cassini spent many cold winter nights… Read More

Paris: de Bure Frères, 1829. First edition. Hardcover. COUNTING REAL ROOTS. 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 roots of an equation was a famous one with a long history, having been considered by Descartes (who gave an upper bound for the number of real roots in his famous 'rule of signs'), Newton (who gave an upper bound for the size of any real root), Lagrange and Fourier (who gave upper bounds for the number of roots by considering the sequence of derivatives), and others, but Cauchy was the first to give a complete solution in his paper 'Memoire sur la Détermination du Nombre des Racines réelles dans les Équations algébriques', published in 1815. The method was cumbersome and impractical, however, and… Read More

Paris: de l'Imprimerie Royale, chez Debure frères, 1823. First edition. PROVIDED RIGOROUS FOUNDATIONS FOR THE CALCULUS. 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 lectures, the first twenty on differential calculus, the remainder on integral calculus, each lecture being precisely four pages in length (so that each lecture could be distributed to the students). It may be regarded as the second part of Cauchy's famous Cours d'analyse (1821) (see below); it gives the first rigorous treatment of calculus proper (differentiation and integration), while the Cours had covered the necessary background concepts (limits, continuity, and convergence). "Within this single text [the Résumé], Cauchy succinctly lays out and rigorously develops all of the topics one encounters in an… Read More

Paris: De l'imprimerie Royale, chez Debure frères, 1821. First edition. THE FIRST RIGOROUS TREATMENT OF LIMITS AND CONTINUITY. First edition, unopened in original wrappers, 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 complex variable. "In 1821, Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1787-1857) published a textbook, the Cours d'analyse, to accompany his course in analysis at the École Polytechnique. It is one of the most influential mathematics books ever written. Not only did Cauchy provide a workable definition of limits and a means to make them the basis of a rigorous theory of calculus, but he also revitalized the idea that all mathematics could be set on such rigorous foundations. Today the quality of a work of mathematics is judged in part on the quality of its rigor; this standard is largely due to the transformation brought about by… Read More

[Budweis, or Prague?]: N.p., 1836. First edition. ON THE THEORY OF LIGHT - EXCEPTIONALLY RARE LITHOGRAPH. First edition, exceptionally rare. "As early as August 1836 Cauchy had a memoire 'Sur la théorie de la lumière' lithographed in Budweis [now in the Czech Republic], which contains the main features of the whole of today's theory" (Grailich, p. 74, note, our translation). This is "a 96-page lithographed publication on light, dated August, which is very rare and not in his Works: a German translation/edition appeared in 1842. After stating various results in pure mathematics, including the expressibility of sums as integrals, [Cauchy] ran through equations and solutions for the propagation of light in various kinds of media. Among his notations, he used some exotic operator symbols to denote differentiation and related techniques" (Grattan-Guinness, p. 1246). "From 1830, the central problem in optics was to determine the mechanical quantities comprising the light medium. For example, in order to… Read More

Bologna: Clemente Ferroni, 1632. First edition. ANTICIPATING GALILEO ON PARABOLIC PROJECTILE MOTION AND NEWTON AND CASSEGRAIN ON REFLECTING TELESCOPES . 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 Newton's reflecting telescope. Clearer and stronger, however, is the claim that Cavalieri anticipated the Cassegrainian telescope" (Ariotti, p. 316). But the importance of Specchio in the history of mechanics may be greater, as it was in the chapters (38-40) of this work devoted to motion that Cavalieri first published the discovery that the path traversed by a projectile moving under gravity is a parabola. Although this was certainly known to Galileo (and to Thomas Harriot) at the time (and Cavalieri credits Galileo with the discovery),… Read More

Bologna: Heirs of Evangelista Dozza, 1653. First edition. Hardcover. THE METHOD OF INDIVISIBLES. Second edition (first, 1635) of Cavalieri's text containing the discovery of the 'method of indivisibles', one of the most important forerunners of the integral calculus. Book II of the work includes the statement of 'Cavalieri's principle' for the determination of areas and volumes, which considers an area as made up of an indefinite number of equidistant parallel line segments ('omnes lineae'), and a solid as made up of an indefinite number of parallel plane areas. It states that, if two planar figures are contained between a pair of parallel lines, and if the lengths of the two segments cut by them from any line parallel to the including lines are always in a given ratio, then the areas of the two planar pieces are also in this ratio (there is an analogous principle for the determination of volumes). Cavalieri's principle provided a simple and effective alternative to the Archimedean method of… Read More

Venice; Venice: Giunta; Dominico de' Franceschi, 1571. First edition. COINED THE PHRASE 'CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD'. First edition, and a fine copy in a contemporary binding, of Cesalpino's very rare work which coined the phrase "circulation of the blood" (circulatio sanguinis, f. 111v) and provided the theoretical basis for Harvey's experimental and quantitative treatment in De motu cordis (1628). "Cesalpino preceded Harvey in the discovery of the concept of the circulation, and Harvey must have known of his ideas" (Garrison-Morton). "Cesalpino's most important medical studies concern the anatomy and physiology of the movement of the blood. He gave a good description of the cardiac valves and of the pulmonary vessels connected to the heart, as well as of the minor blood circulation; he also recognized that the heart is the center of the circulation of the blood and accepted the existence of the traditional synanastomoses of the arteries with the veins. He did not, however, discover the major… Read More

Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1583. First edition. the first true textbook of botany (PMM 97). First edition, and an exceptionally fine copy, of "the first true textbook of botany' (DSB): the introduction of Cesalpino's classification system, which anticipated Linnaeus' system of binomial nomenclature. "Whereas other sixteenth-century botanists were content simply to compile vast haphazard catalogues of plants, Cesalpino was the first to devise a rational classification system based upon plant morphology, the principles of which he set forth in the first book of De plantis" (Norman). "With Andreas Caesalpinus a new era begins ... His book 'On Plants' was the first attempt to classify plants in a systematic manner based on a comparative study of forms ... The traditional division into trees, shrubs, half-shrubs and herbs is retained, but they are now subdivided into different categories according to their seed, fruit and flower. The first section contains the general system, while the other fifteen… Read More

Milan: Lodovico Monza, 1678. First edition. CEVA'S THEOREM. 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 of a system of points to obtain the relation of the segments which are produced by straight lines drawn through their intersections. He further utilized these properties in many theorems of the theory of transverse lines-for example, in placing at the points of intersection of the straight lines weights that are inversely proportional to the segments. From the relations of the weights, which are determined by the law of the lever, the relation of the segments is then derived. Ceva first applied his method, which is a combination of geometry and mechanics, to five basic figures, which he called 'elements.' He then used these in special problems, in which… Read More

[Chicago: Western Society of Engineers], 1897. First edition. Hardcover. A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN AIRCRAFT DESIGN. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of this seminal work in the history of aviation, and a remarkable association copy linking three great early American pioneers of aviation and technology. In this work, Chanute presented his findings from nearly 2,000 flights made at Dune Park, Indiana, on the shores of Lake Michigan, in the summer of the previous year. These test-flights, led to his introduction of the Pratt-trussed biplane configuration, the essential shape of the early airplane, which was later adopted by the Wright brothers, and which he described in the present article. "It was a pivotal moment in the history of aircraft design, ranking with Henson and Stringfellow's postulation of the Aerial Steam Carriage over half a century earlier and Cayley's even more distant derivation of the modern airplane shape. It ushered in an era of strong, light, straightforward, uncomplicated (and… Read More

Florence: Luigi Carlieri, 1794. First edition. A LANDMARK IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHIATRY. First edition, an exceptionally fine copy, of perhaps the greatest rarity in the history of psychiatric literature. Based on his practical experience at the hospital of S. Bonifazio in Florence, in Della pazzia Chiarugi (1759-1820) discussed the causes and treatment of insanity. Chiarugi's work and the reforms he instituted at S. Bonifacio represent "the first application of the principles of psychiatric treatment which are at the basis of psychiatry even today" (Mora, p. 431). Chiarugi's "work constitutes a major landmark in the history of psychiatry" (ibid., p. 433). Published in three volumes, "Della pazzia does not primarily c oncern treatment, but rather the conceptualization, diagnosis, and classification of mental illness ... Volume one dealt with the nature, cause, course, and general treatment of madness; volume two dealt with signs, causes, and effects; volume three dealt with nosology. Appended were one… Read More

Rome: Imprimérie des Sciences Mathématiques, 1882. First edition. Hardcover. THE MOST ORIGINAL MATHEMATICAL WORK OF THE 15TH CENTURY. 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 published here for the first time, this first French work on algebra introduced several groundbreaking innovations into European mathematics, notably the use of exponents to denote powers of a number and the use of negative numbers in the solution of equations. The first part of Le Triparty concerns the arithmetic operations on numbers, including an explanation of the Hindu-Arabic numerals. Chuquet gave a 'règle des nombres moyens' according to which a fraction could be found between any two given fractions by taking the sum of their numerators and dividing by the sum of their… Read More

Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins, 1936. First edition. Hardcover. THE FIRST PROOF THAT THE ENTSCHEIDUNGSPROBLEM IS UNSOLVABLE. 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 his 'Turing machines.' "Church got it right and he got it first ... By any purely quantifiable evaluation Church's contribution was at least as important as Turing's" (Robert Irving Soare in Alan Turing, his work and impact, p. 67). The work of Church and Turing gave a negative answer to the problem posed by David Hilbert in 1928 of whether mathematics is 'decidable,' that is, whether there is an effective procedure to determine, for every mathematical statement, whether the statement is provable. Both the lambda-calculus and Turing machines have proved… Read More

New York: The Association for Symbolic Logic, Inc, 1936. First edition. Hardcover. THE 'DECISION PROBLEM' IS UNSOLVABLE. First edition, journal issue in the original printed wrappers, of Church's solution to the 'Entschedungsproblem' ('decision problem'). "Church's paper, submitted on April 15, 1936, was the first to contain a demonstration that David Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem - i.e., the question as to whether there exists in mathematics a definite method of guaranteeing the truth or falsity of any mathematical statement - was unsolvable. Church did so by devising the 'lambda-calculus.' A few months earlier, Church had earlier shown the existence of an unsolvable problem of elementary number theory [although this was published later than the present paper], but [the offered] paper was the first to put his findings into the exact form of an answer to Hilbert's 'Entscheidungsproblem.' Church's paper bears on the question of what is computable, a problem addressed more directly by Alan Turing in… Read More

Paris: Nyon, Didot and Quillau, 1731. First edition. THE FIRST TREATISE ON SOLID ANALYTIC GEOMETRY" (BOYER). 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 of a cubic curve of a special form. This publication led to Clairaut's election to the Académie des Sciences at the age of eighteen, the rules of admission being suspended to accommodate the mathematical prodigy. "Alexis Claude Clairaut was one of the most precocious of mathematicians, outdoing even Blaise Pascal in this respect. At the age of ten he was reading the textbooks of L'Hospital on conics and the calculus, when he was thirteen he read a paper on geometry to the Académie des Sciences ... In the year of his election Clairaut published a celebrated treatise, Recherches sur les courbesà double courbure, the… Read More

Paris: Nyon, Didot and Quillau, 1731. First edition. THE FIRST TREATISE ON SOLID ANALYTIC GEOMETRY" (BOYER). 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 of a cubic curve of a special form. This publication led to Clairaut's election to the Académie des Sciences at the age of eighteen, the rules of admission being suspended to accommodate the mathematical prodigy. "Alexis Claude Clairaut was one of the most precocious of mathematicians, outdoing even Blaise Pascal in this respect. At the age of ten he was reading the textbooks of L'Hospital on conics and the calculus, when he was thirteen he read a paper on geometry to the Académie des Sciences ... In the year of his election Clairaut published a celebrated treatise, Recherches sur les courbesà double courbure, the… Read More

Berlin: Trowibsch and son for Ferdinand Dümmler, 1837. First edition. Hardcover. PMM 297 - THE PHILOSOPHY OF WAR. First edition, very rare complete set of all 10 volumes, of this classic work, including Vom Kriege (vols. 1-3), "the most profound exposition of the philosophy of war" (PMM). "On War is one of the most important books ever written on the subject of war. Clausewitz, a Prussian officer who fought against the French during the Napoleonic Wars, sought to understand and analyse the phenomenon of war so that future leaders could conduct and win conflicts more effectively. He studied the human and social factors that affect outcomes, as well as the tactical and technological ones. He understood that war was a weapon of government, and that political purpose, chance, and enmity combine to shape its dynamics. On War continues to be read by military strategists, politicians, and others for its timeless insights" (Introduction to abridged English translation, Oxford University Press, 2008). "The… Read More