Search Results: Authors starting with F from SOPHIA RARE BOOKS

Padua: Lorenzo Pasquati, 1603. First edition. Hardcover. THE VALVES OF THE VEINS. First edition, very rare first separate issue (see below), "of the first systematic study of the structure, distribution and position of the venous valves. Although the valves of the veins had been observed previously by G.B. Canano and Amato Lusitano, Fabrici studied them anew on the basis of his own observations. Perhaps because he analyzed anatomical structures in terms of their purpose, he interpreted the function of the valves as slowing down the influx of blood in order to distribute it more evenly to the various parts of the body. Although Fabrici's analysis was in part erroneous, De venarum ostiolis became his most influential work, in that it inspired his student, William Harvey, to conceptualize the circulation of the blood" (Norman). "The sumptuously printed folios which Fabricius published in 1603-1604 were issued separately, and unbound. Though they escaped Choulant's notice, they are among the rarest and… Read More

Venice: Marco Antonio Ulmo and Gratioso Perchachino, 1561. First edition. THE GREATEST ITALIAN ANATOMY OF THE 16TH CENTURY . First edition, first issue, very rare, of the greatest Italian anatomical book of the sixteenth century, a detailed critical commentary on Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica. This is a pristine copy in an untouched contemporary binding. "The large amount of new material [in the present work] included Falloppio's investigations of primary and secondary centers of ossification, the first clear description of primary dentition, numerous contributions to the study of the muscles (especially those of the head), and the famous account of the uterine ("Falloppian") tubes, which he correctly described as resembling small trumpets (tubae). He also gave to the placenta and vagina their present scientific names, provided a superior description of the auditory apparatus (including the first clear accounts of the chorda tympani and semicircular canals), and was the first to clearly… Read More

London: Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1852. First edition. Hardcover. FARADAY ON LINES OF FORCE. First edition, journal issue, of these two papers containing Faraday's detailed investigations of the nature of the 'lines of force' he had proposed in his first paper on electromagnetism, 'On some new electro-magnetical motions, and on the theory of magnetism', originally published in the 21 October 1821 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Science. These investigations laid the foundations of field theory. "Faraday's work on electromagnetic rotations led him to take a view of electromagnetism different from that of most of his contemporaries. Where they focused on the electrical fluids and the peculiar forces engendered by their motion (Ampère's position), he was forced to consider the line of force. He did not know what it was in 1821, but he suspected that it was a state of strain in the molecules of the current carrying wire and the surrounding medium produced by the passage of an electrical… Read More

London: Richard Taylor, 1831. First edition. PRECURSOR TO HIS DISCOVERY OF ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION. First edition, very rare offprint, inscribed by Faraday to his friend and fellow electrical researcher William Snow Harris, of one of Faraday's most important papers: his experiments with sound vibrations that facilitated his revolutionary discovery of the production of electricity by electromagnetic induction. "In February 1831, he began a series of beautiful experiments on acoustical figures ... His goal seems clear: acoustical figures could provide invaluable clues to the nature of vibrations in general. From these clues it might be possible to clarify the action of electricity ... the first appearance in his Diary of the notion of electricity as a wave follows so closely upon his acoustical researches that ... these experiments must be viewed as the preliminaries to his discovery and unravelling of electromagnetic induction" (Pearce Williams, p. 179). "Faraday was a music lover and, between 1828… Read More

London: W. Nicol, 1826. First edition. FARADAY ON BOSCOVICH'S THEORY OF POINT ATOMS. First edition, very rare separately-paginated offprint, inscribed by Faraday to his friend and fellow electrical researcher William Snow Harris. This early chemical paper of Faraday contends that, while every substance is normally surrounded by a vapour of the same substance, and that the pressure of this vapour increases with temperature, when the temperature is lowered sufficiently the vapour pressure vanishes, so that the body becomes 'fixed.' "What puts a stop to vaporization? it may be asked. Liquids, we know, have a certain attraction for their own particles, evinced in their disposition to collect into drops. The particles of solids are attracted more powerfully, and cohere strongly together. Mr. Faraday is of opinion, that when the vaporizing power becomes weak, at low temperatures, it may be overcome and negatived completely by this cohesive attraction, and no escape of particles in the vaporous form be… Read More

Paris: Jean Mariette, 1728. First edition. FAUCHARD'S PIONEERING TREATISE ON DENTISTRY - "THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC WORK ON ITS SUBJECT" (PMM). First edition of Fauchard's pioneering work in the field of modern dentistry. "Before Fauchard's time the profession of dentistry was truly a 'mystery: for its practitioners had steadfastly refrained from publishing details of their technique and equipment. Fauchard summarized in his pages with numerous illustrations all that was best in the practice of his day and disclosed what had been hitherto jealously guarded secrets. Le Chirurgien Dentiste - 'The Surgeon-Dentist, or a Treatise on the Teeth with instruction on the means of maintaining them Sound and Healthy'- is in fact the first scientific work on its subject, and modern dentistry begins with its publication. Fauchard describes in the fullest detail the procedure in operative dentistry, in the filling of teeth and most especially in prosthesis, which is that part of dental surgery concerned with artificial… Read More

Paris: [Chardon for] Cuchet, 1784. First edition. DIBNER 179: 'THE FIRST SERIOUS TREATISE ON AEROSTATION' (PMM 209) . First edition, second issue of the first volume (with the four-page supplement), of the first full-length account of the historic experiments with balloon flight conducted by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, and "the first serious treatise on aerostation as a practical possibility" (PMM). The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph (1740-1810) and Étienne (1745-99), had been intrigued by the experiments of Cavendish and Priestly with 'inflammable air' (hydrogen). "After some unsatisfactory experiments with hydrogen gas (which dissipated too quickly from their trial models), the Montgolfiers discovered that air heated to 100 degrees Celsius became sufficiently rarefied to lift a balloon and did not diffuse. On 5 June 1783 the brothers released their first full-sized balloon, a paper and linen globe thirty-five feet in diameter, which rose 6,000 feet and travelled a horizontal distance of 7,668… Read More

Castres: F. Barcouda, 1664. CONTAINING AN ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION BY FERMAT. 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 published in his lifetime, both of extreme rarity. "The translator of Benedetto Castelli's work on measuring running water inserted into the work brilliant note of Fermat's on a letter of Synesius. The letter itself was so obscure that Père Petau, who wrote a commentary on Synesius, admitted that he could not understand it" (from Fermat's obituary in the Journal des Sçavans, mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Obituaries/Fermat_obituary/). Fermat's contribution, the 'Observation sur Synesius,' begins as follows (our translation): "The pages which remain empty in this quire made me think of filling them with the splendid observation which I learned some days ago… Read More

[Not published: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 1950. First edition. FEYNMAN'S UNPUBLISHED LECTURES ON MESON THEORY. First and only edition, extremely rare, of the mimeographed notes of Feynman's lecture course on meson theory, delivered as a visiting lecturer at Caltech (to which he moved permanently in the following year). Feynman had developed his distinctive diagrammatic approach while attempting to solve the problem of divergences in quantum electrodynamics (QED), the quantum theory of the interactions between electrically charged particles and the electromagnetic field (between electrons and photons, for example). "What captured most theorists' attention soon after the war was not electron physics, but rather the embarrassment of riches suddenly pouring forth from the new accelerators. A flood of new particles, similar to but in many ways distinct from the familiar electrons and photons, surprised physicists when they began to probe high-energy interactions with the aid of… Read More

Pasadena, CA: The California Institute of Technology, 1963. First edition. FEYNMAN'S LECTURES ON PHYSICS- EXTREMELY RARE PRE-PUBLICATION ISSUE. Extremely rare pre-publication issue of a section of Feynman's legendary lectures on physics, namely that devoted to electromagnetism, from Maxwell's equations to the optical and magnetic properties of materials, and concluding with four lectures on elasticity and fluid flow. According to the curators of Caltech's Feynman Lectures website (), this preliminary edition was produced by Caltech's graphics department between the end of the 1962-1963 academic year and the beginning of the 1963-64 academic year. It is copyrighted 1963, one year before the first published edition of the Feynman lectures, produced by Addison-Wesley. No more than 300 copies of this pre-publication edition were printed. This section of the Feynman Lectures is a record of part of the second year's lectures, which were given to the sophomore class during the 1962-1963 academic year (all… Read More

[Lancaster, PA & New York, NY: American Institute of Physics for the American Physical Society, 1939. First edition. PRESENTATION OFFPRINT INSCRIBED BY FEYNMAN. First edition, extremely rare offprint, inscribed by Feynman, of Feynman's senior undergraduate thesis at MIT, a fundamental discovery "that has played an important role in theoretical chemistry and condensed matter physics" (Selected Papers, p. 1), published when he was just twenty-one. This is a remarkable paper, documenting the first steps in original research of one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. "Feynman was one of the most creative and influential physicists of the twentieth century. A veteran of the Manhattan Project of World War II and a 1965 Nobel laureate in physics, he made lasting contributions across many domains, from electrodynamics and quantum theory to nuclear and particle physics, solid-state physics, and gravitation" (DSB). Feynman showed that "the force on an atom's nucleus is no more or less than… Read More

Vancouver: [np], 1975. A detailed draft for a talk given to the Canadian Association of Physics Students, in Vancouver, on the contemporary state of subatomic particle physics, its current difficulties and possible future developments. Although a 'popular' talk, it is pitched at a high level, appropriate to postgraduate students in physics. Feynman manuscripts with scientific content are very rare on the market - this is one of a small collection of such manuscripts that was retained by Feynman's family until 2018 when it was consigned to auction. Widely regarded as the most brilliant, influential, and iconoclastic figure in theoretical physics in the post-World War II era, Feynman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics 1965 with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles." Feynman refers briefly to a talk given to students in Vancouver in Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! (p.… Read More

Paris: Gérard Morrhy and Jean Pierre, 1532. First edition. A MASTERPIECE OF ILLUSTRATED BOOK PRODUCTION - THE RICCATI COPY. First edition, the Riccati family copy, of this beautiful book, Finé's masterpiece of illustrated book production. One of the handsomest scientific books of the period, this work is especially remarkable for the fact that the author designed its illustrations himself. Although Finé had published a few works before 1532, and edited others, "it was only with the publication of the Protomathesis that he revealed himself as the inventor of a new kind of scientific book" (Pantin, p. 289). The first two parts of the Protomathesis deal with arithmetic and geometry, the third with cosmography, and the fourth with gnomonics. The part on cosmography provides a valuable account of the state of astronomy in the decade immediately preceding the Copernican revolution. A great variety of astronomical instruments are shown along with tables used in calculation (several of the instruments are… Read More

London: John Matthews, 1712. First edition. Hardcover. THE FOUNDATION FOR MODERN ASTRONOMY - PROBABLY BOUND FOR QUEEN ANNE. The true first edition, extremely rare, of Flamsteed's catalogue of fixed stars and sextant observations, the foundation of modern observational astronomy; this copy was probably bound for Queen Anne (please see below). Flamsteed's catalogue was far more extensive and accurate than anything that had gone before. It was the first constructed with instruments using telescopic sights and micrometer eyepieces; Flamsteed was the first to study systematic errors in his instruments; he was the first to urge the fundamental importance of using clocks and taking meridian altitudes; and he insisted on having assistants to repeat the observations and the calculations. The catalogue contains about 3000 naked eye stars (Ptolemy and Tycho listed 1000, Hevelius 2000) with an accuracy of about 10 seconds of arc. However, Flamsteed, although appointed Astronomer Royal in 1675, by the turn of the… Read More

Paris: Bachelier, 1853. First edition. Proving the wave theory of light. First edition, rare, and an exceptionally fine copy, of Foucault's doctoral thesis on the speed of light, in which he provides a convincing proof for the wave theory of light. In the 1840s Foucault undertook a series of optical experiments using an apparatus of rotating mirrors to determine the velocity of light. Originally developed by Charles Wheatstone to measure the velocity of electricity, the rotating mirror apparatus had been proposed as an instrument for the measurement of light in 1838 by Dominique-François Arago who failed in his own attempts to carry out the experiment. Foucault's initial work was carried out in conjunction with the physicist Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau (1819-1896); but a personal dispute broke up their partnership in 1847 and the two collaborators became rivals, working separately on the same problem using the same technique. Both reached the same conclusion, but while Fizeau was the first to… Read More

Paris: Bernard, 1808. First edition. EVANS (37) - THE TRUE FIRST PUBLICATION OF FOURIER SERIES. First printing, extremely rare, of the discovery of Fourier series, and their application to the mathematical theory of heat, appearing here 14 years before Fourier's famous Théorie analytique de la chaleur. "This work marks an epoch in the history of both pure and applied mathematics. It is the source of all modern methods in mathematical physics ... The gem of Fourier's great book is 'Fourier series'" (Cajori, A History of Mathematics, p. 270). "The methods that Fourier used to deal with heat problems were those of a true pioneer because he had to work with concepts that were not yet properly formulated. He worked with discontinuous functions when others dealt with continuous ones, used integral as an area when integral as an anti-derivative was popular, and talked about the convergence of a series of functions before there was a definition of convergence ... such methods were to prove fruitful in… Read More

Venice: Heirs of Lucantonio Giunta, 1546. First edition. THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN VIEWS OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND EPIDEMIOLOGY. First edition of Fracastoro's most important scientific work, forming "the foundation of all modern views on the nature of infectious diseases" (Heirs of Hippocrates 101). "The first scientific definition of contagion known and a competent discussion of causes of infection. Gives a clear account of typhus" (Stillwell, The Awakening Interest in Science during the First Century of Printing, 368). Fracastoro's "most important medical treatise, De contagione, consists of a short theoretical discourse on sympathy and antipathy in physics and a longer, more practical account of contagion and contagious diseases. Here, for the first time, was a clear description of the spread of disease by seminaria contagionum, the seeds of infection - the suggestion of the germ theory. De contagione is arranged in three 'books.' The first explained the mechanism of contagion, how seminaria can be… Read More

Lyon: Thibauld Payan, 1561. First edition. Hardcover. ONE OF THE GREATEST SURGEONS OF THE RENAISSANCE. Second edition, almost four times the length of the first (1556), with 25 new illustrations including 22 instruments and three full skeletons. This is Franco's major work, very rare, a copy in an untouched contemporary binding and with a fine provenance. "Pierre Franco, creator of suprapubic lithotomy cataract operation and surgical repair of hernia with preservation of the testis, is considered to be one of the greatest surgeons of the Renaissance and a forerunner of urology" (Androutsos, p. 255). "Franco was influential in bringing operative surgery back into the realm of regular surgical practice, recapturing it from the ignorant hands of charlatans and itinerant "cutters." His major interest was in hernia surgery, to which he introduced several important innovations including an operation preserving the testicle (which was usually removed), a less risky incision at the base of the scrotum and… Read More

München: Lentner, 1817. First edition. THE FOUNDING WORK OF ASTROPHYSICS THE FIRST ILLUSTRATION OF THE SOLAR SPECTRUM . First edition, journal issue, of the founding work of astrophysics, the discovery of the absorption lines in the solar spectrum; the second plate, which reproduces Fraunhofer's drawing of these lines (etched by Fraunhofer himself), is the first illustration of the solar spectrum. "In 1802, when describing his new process for measuring the refraction of light, W. H. Wollaston reported the occurrence of dark lines in the solar spectrum but regarded them as simply natural dividing lines between the colours. Fraunhofer, originally not a scientist, but a practising optician, concentrated on these dark lines, and the title of his paper describes the method and purpose of his investigations: 'Definition of the Capacity of Refraction and Colour-diffusion of various kinds of Glass' ... His achievements justify describing him as the founder of astrophysics. He charted several hundred lines,… Read More

[Altona: Hammerich- und Heineking'schen Buchdruckerey, 1825. First edition. INSCRIBED BY FRAUNHOFER TO JOHN HERSCHEL. First edition, extremely rare separately-paginated offprint (journal pagination 31-92), inscribed by Fraunhofer to John Herschel, of this work on atmospheric optical phenomena, including haloes and parhelia. "Fraunhofer had carried out experiments in 1825 with diffraction in disordered small gaps and particles, and developed the corresponding theory. Fraunhofer (1787-1826) was the first to interpret haloes around the sun and moon as diffraction phenomena. The fog particles that produce the aureole are transparent and Fraunhofer experimented with small glass spheres of the same size distributed on a glass plate. He found the same diffraction pattern as from holes in opaque plates" (Schroder & Wiederkehr, p. 251). Fraunhofer's "family and early acquaintances were closely associated with the skilled craft tradition and particularly concerned with the glass and optical trades. As he… Read More