Search Results: Authors starting with M from SOPHIA RARE BOOKS

London: Printed for the author's children and sold by A. Millar, et al., 1748. First edition. Hardcover. MACLAURIN ON NEWTON - LARGE-PAPER COPY. First edition, large-paper copy, of Maclaurin's statement of Newtonian theory, one of the three "most outstanding popular introductions to Newtonian science of the eighteenth century" (I. B. Cohen, Franklin and Newton, 1956, p. 209). "Though a number of other general expositions of Newton's thought were published during the eighteenth century, Maclaurin's Account has long been recognized as the leading authoritative statement of mainstream Newtonianism" (DNB). "Gifted with a genius for geometrical investigation second only to Newton's... Maclaurin, the one mathematician of the first rank trained in Great Britain in the [18th] century, confirmed Newton's exclusive influence over British mathematics" (ibid.). Maclaurin's most his most important work, Treatise of Fluxions (1742), was "the earliest logical and systematic publication of the Newtonian methods. It… Read More

London: for William and John Innys, 1720. First edition. EXTENDING NEWTON"S TREATMENT OF HIGHER PLANE CURVES. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Maclaurin's first book, dedicated to Newton and bearing his imprimatur as president of the Royal Society. Maclaurin is best known for his Treatise of Fluxions (1742), "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). "In 1719 Maclaurin (1698-1746) visited London, where he was well received in the scientific circles of the capital and where he met Newton. On a second visit he met and formed a lasting friendship with Martin Folkes, who became president of the Royal Society in 1741, Maclaurin was meanwhile actively working on his Geometrica organica, which was published in 1720 with Newton's imprimatur. Geometrica organica, sive descriptio linearum curvarum universalis dealt with the general properties of conics and of the higher plane… Read More

Edinburgh: Printed by T.W. and T. Ruddimans, 1742. First edition. Hardcover. STOOD AS A MODEL OF RIGOR FOR ALMOST A CENTURY. 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 partly (but only partly, see below) as a response to the attack on the foundations of the method of fluxions and infinitesimal calculus made by George Berkeley in The Analyst (1734). "[Berkeley] showed that many definitions in the infinitesimal calculus are paradoxical and cannot be justified by intuition. He explained the success of the new calculus by a repeated neglect of infinitely small quantities leading through a compensation of errors to a correct answer" (Jahnke, A History of Analysis, 127). "MacLaurin provided a rigorous foundation for the method of fluxions based on a limit concept drawn from Archimedean classical… Read More

London: for William and John Innys, 1720. First edition. INSCRIBED PRESENTATION COPY. 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 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). "In 1719 Maclaurin (1698-1746) visited London, where he was well received in the scientific circles of the capital and where he met Newton. On a second visit he met and formed a lasting friendship with Martin Folkes, who became president of the Royal Society in 1741, Maclaurin was meanwhile actively working on his Geometrica organica, which was published in 1720 with Newton's imprimatur. Geometrica organica, sive descriptio linearum curvarum universalis dealt with the general properties of… Read More

Modena: impensis Authoris ex Typ. Cassiani, 1662. First edition. INCLUDING A LARGE AND DETAILED LUNAR MAP . First edition of these very rare ephemerides, containing one of the most detailed lunar maps up to that time. Cornelio Malvasia (1603-63), a wealthy nobleman and amateur astronomer from Bologna, made his astronomical observations in the private observatory he built over his villa in Panzano, near Modena. Amongst his collaborators was Geminiano Montanari (1633-87). Malvasia also did much to foster the talent of the young Gian Domenico Cassini (1625-1712), whom he recommended for the chair of astronomy at Bologna University. Montanari became skilled in the design and construction of astronomical instruments. To make the lunar map in the present work, Montanari used a telescope together with a 'reticule', an early form of bifilar micrometer, designed by Malvasia. The present work was dedicated to Cardinal Giulio Cesare Sacchetti - twice nominated by Antonio Barberini as the French candidate for… Read More

Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1967. First edition. THE FIRST PAPER ON FRACTALS "FAMOUS IN THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS". First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, of Mandelbrot's first paper on fractals (a term he coined in 1975). "Today Mandelbrot's paper on the coast of Britain is famous in the history of mathematics" (). "Mandelbrot had come across the coastline question in an obscure posthumous article by an English scientist, Lewis F. Richardson, who groped with a surprising number of the issues that later became part of chaos [theory] ... Wondering about coastlines, Richardson checked encyclopaedias in Spain and Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands, and discovered discrepancies of 20% in the estimated lengths of their common frontiers ... [Mandelbrot] argued [that] ... the answer depends on the length of your ruler. Consider one plausible method of measuring. A surveyor takes a set of dividers, opens them to a length of one yard, and walks… Read More

Bologna: per l'herede del Benacci, 1660. First edition. LENSES, SPECTACLES, TELESCOPES AND MICROSCOPES. First and only edition of this important work on the making of lenses, spectacles, telescopes and microscopes, "the most comprehensive book on the subject" (Ilardi, p. 229). "Seventeenth-century account of dioptrics, dealing with light, refraction, the eye, vision, the invention of spectacles, the making of spectacles and telescopes. The book, which is essentially practical, aims at showing the optical worker how lenses are ground and how they may be used both to remedy visual defects and also for telescopes. The dedication ... is to Saint Lucia, the patron saint of the blind and those with diseased eyes" (British Optical Association Catalogue). "An important work in the history of optics, valuable as one of the earliest detailed accounts of methods of grinding and polishing lenses. A large number of fine woodcuts illustrate the machinery and processes described by the author" (Becker Catalogue).… Read More

Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1888. First edition. THE BIRTH OF CINEMATOGRAPHY: THE FOUNDATION OF THE MOVIE INDUSTRY. A remarkable collection of offprints documenting Marey's foundational contributions to the science of cinematography. Marey was "the lead character in the birth of scientific cinema" (Tosi, p. 82); he "was the first to use a single camera to produce photographs on a strip of sensitized film in real time, rapidly enough for the illusion of movement to be reconstituted for more than a single viewer at once ... Marey's contribution to the history of cinema began on 15 October 1888 with an announcement to the Académie des Sciences, the forum for all his presentations. Before he described his photographic experiments with the revolving mirror, he declared his intention to make a series of images on a long band of sensitized paper, 'animated by a rapid translation with stoppages at the moment of pose.' Two weeks later he presented the members of the Académie with the first series of pictures… Read More

Vienna: Leopold J. Kaliwoda, 1745. First edition. "ONE OF THE MOST EXQUISITELY ILLUSTRATED ASTRONOMICAL WORKS EVER PRINTED" (KENNEY) - AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY . First edition, author's presentation copy, of "one of the most exquisitely illustrated astronomical works ever printed" (Kenney, p. 200), which describes and illustrates the astronomical instruments in the private observatory of Marinoni, mathematician and astronomer to the Imperial Court of Austria and geodetic surveyor. Like the private observatories of Tycho Brahe and Hevelius in the two preceding centuries, Marinoni's observatory was one of the most beautiful and best equipped in Europe in his time. He built his own instruments and those illustrated here include quadrants, telescopes, micrometers, an improved Graham pendulum, and a camera obscura. Marinoni left all the instruments to the Empress Maria Theresa, to whom he dedicated this work. Some of Marinoni's astronomical observations appeared in journal articles, but many remain… Read More

Montpelier: Daniel Pech, 1671. First edition. Hardcover. LESS THAN A DOZEN COPIES KNOWN. First edition, very rare, of this important work, of which "less than a dozen copies are known to exist, most imperfect" (The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, vol. 2, p. 153. "Sold only by the author at his home in Montpellier, the Pratique contains clear directions on practical operations and the preparation of chemicals. Matte la Faveur, distiller and demonstrator of chemistry at Montpellier, simultaneously gave a course at Paris until 1684, when he was succeeded by the famous chemist Nicolas Lemery. Undoubtedly, Lemery used this work when writing his celebrated Cours de Chymie (1675), and it is well known that he seldom acknowledged his sources. The Pratique forms a direct link between the Traité de la Chymie (1663) of Christophle Glaser and the Cours of Lemery" (Neville). Matte's Pratique de chymie gives a good indication of his teaching of the subject. He defined chemistry in its relation to… Read More

Berlin (i.e., Paris): np, 1754. First edition. A PIONEERING WORK ON GENETICS. First edition in French, the earliest obtainable, and very rare, of Maupertuis' remarkable original work on the nature of heredity and evolution, which marks him out, in the words of evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr (The Growth of Biological Thought, p. 328), as "one of the pioneers of genetics". "Buffon saw clearly that both father and mother made a genetic contribution, but it was P. M. de Maupertuis, more than anyone else, who developed a theory of inheritance that can be considered as foreshadowing later developments. Maupertuis espoused a theory of pangenesis, based on the thought of Anaxagoras and Hippocrates, postulating particles ('elements') from both father and mother as responsible for the characters of the offspring. Most components of his theory can be found in the later theories of Naudin, Darwin and Galton" (ibid., p. 646). This is "one of his most significant works, later called Système de la nature. A… Read More

Hambourg [i.e., Leiden]: [Élie Luzac], 1753. First edition. THE INFAMOUS KÖNIG - MAUPERTUIS - VOLTAIRE POLEMIC - THE COPY OF MAUPERTUIS' CLOSEST FRIEND LA CONDAMINE . First edition, rare, of this collection of pamphlets relating to the 'König affair,' the celebrated polemic on the principle of least action, "perhaps the ugliest of all the famous scientific disputes" (DSB VII: 442). This is an exceptional association copy, from the library of Charles-Marie de la Condamine, Maupertuis' closest friend and scientific colleague; they were jointly responsible for the famous expeditions to determine the length of an arc of the meridian near the poles (Maupertuis) and the equator (La Condamine), the aim being to decide once and for all whether the earth was an oblate or prolate spheroid - whether Isaac Newton or Jacques Cassini had been correct. "La Condamine, three years younger than Maupertuis, one of Maupertuis's closest friends and a participant in the Newtonian campaign, headed the Academy's… Read More

Venice: apud Franciscum Franciscium Senensem, 1575. First edition. ONE OF THE FOREMOST MATHEMATICIANS OF THE 16TH CENTURY". First and only edition, rare, and with a distinguished provenance, containing seven 'opuscula,' and, with separate title and pagination, the Arithmeticorum libri duo; all of these works were published here for the first time. One of the 'opuscula' contains the most important original work on conic sections published in the sixteenth century; the Arithmeticorum includes the first published use of mathematical induction. "Francesco Maurolico is generally recognized to have been one of the foremost mathematicians of the sixteenth century" (Rosen). Cajori has called him "the greatest geometer of the sixteenth century", although many of his works remain unpublished even today. "The greatest number of Maurolico's mathematical writings are gathered in the Opuscula mathematica; indeed, the second volume of that work, Arithmeticorum libri duo, is wholly devoted to that subject and… Read More

Messina: Pietro Spira, 1558. First edition. Hardcover. 'EXCESSIVELY RARE' (SOTHERAN). First edition, 'excessively rare' (Sotheran), of this collection of works on 'spherics', the geometrical and trigonometrical techniques necessary for the description of the motion of the celestial bodies, including Maurolico's Latin translations of works by four ancient Greek writers, Autolycus, Menelaus, Euclid and Theodosius, those of the first two authors constituting the first printed editions. Maurolico, one of the most original mathematicians of the 16th century, appended his own original propositions on sphaerics, probably based on astronomical observations made from 1548 to 1550 in Sicily, contained in his Sphaericorum libri II, Sermo de Sphaera, and Compendium mathematicae. He also includes a number of trigonometrical tables, including the first printed tables of secants, the Tabula Benefica, "in frank imitation of Regiomontanus's Tabula Feconda for tangents. It therefore seems that Maurolico had,… Read More

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873. First edition. PMM 355 - LIGHT AS A FORM OF ELECTRICITY. First edition of Maxwell's presentation of his theory of electromagnetism, advancing ideas that would become essential for modern physics, including the landmark "hypothesis that light and electricity are the same in their ultimate nature" (Grolier/Horblit). "This treatise did for electromagnetism what Newton's Principia had done from classical mechanics. It not only provided the mathematical tools for the investigation and representation of the whole electromagnetic theory, but it altered the very framework of both theoretical and experimental physics. It was this work that finally displaced action-at-a-distance physics and substituted the physics of the field" (Historical Encyclopedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, p. 2539). "From a long view of the history of mankind - seen from, say, ten thousand years from now - there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be… Read More

London: Harrison & Sons, 1880. THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT. First edition, in the very rare original printed wrappers, of Maxwell's last paper, "published posthumously in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, [which] concerned a means of measuring the speed of the Earth through the hypothetical aether, and was the inspiration for Michelson and Morley's famous experiment. The null result of that experiment was to lead to the Special Theory of Relativity" (Longair, Maxwell's Enduring Legacy, p. 71). "Maxwell's words had stimulated Michelson to carry out one of the great experiments of physics" (Longair, CavMag, p. 13). "The paper was in fact by George Stokes, reporting a letter which Maxwell sent to Mr. D[avid] P[eck] Todd of the Nautical Almanac Office in Washington dated 19 March 1879. The main body of the letter concerns the use of accurate timing of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites as a means of measuring the speed of light plus the Earth's motion through the ether. This… Read More

London & Cambridge: Macmillan, 1871. First edition. MAXWELL'S INAUGURAL LECTURE. First edition, extremely rare, of Maxwell's inaugural lecture as Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, which marks the beginning of the tradition of experimental research at the Cavendish Laboratory, a tradition which was to lead to 29 Nobel Prizes being awarded to members of the Cavendish between 1904 and 1989. This lecture was delivered just two years before Maxwell published his famous Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, which "did for electromagnetism what Newton's Principia had done from classical mechanics. It not only provided the mathematical tools for the investigation and representation of the whole electromagnetic theory, but it altered the very framework of both theoretical and experimental physics. It was this work that finally displaced action-at-a-distance physics and substituted the physics of the field" (Historical Encyclopedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, p.… Read More

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873. First edition. PMM 355 - LIGHT AS A FORM OF ELECTRICITY. First edition, first issue, from the library of an important 19th century electrical engineer, of Maxwell's presentation of his theory of electromagnetism, advancing ideas that would become essential for modern physics, including the landmark "hypothesis that light and electricity are the same in their ultimate nature" (Grolier/Horblit). "This treatise did for electromagnetism what Newton's Principia had done from classical mechanics. It not only provided the mathematical tools for the investigation and representation of the whole electromagnetic theory, but it altered the very framework of both theoretical and experimental physics. It was this work that finally displaced action-at-a-distance physics and substituted the physics of the field" (Historical Encyclopedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, p. 2539). "From a long view of the history of mankind - seen from, say, ten thousand years from now - there can… Read More

[London: Macmillan, 1939. First edition. THE DISCOVERY OF NUCLEAR FISSION - PMM 422b . First edition, extremely rare offprint, of the discovery of nuclear fission, a process which had been observed by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann the previous year but for which they were unable to provide an explanation. "In the late 1930s, a series of experiments showed that bombarding uranium with neutrons produced several new radioactive elements, which were assumed to have atomic numbers near to that of uranium (Z = 92). This assumption followed naturally from the prevailing view of nuclear decay, which involved the emission, through tunnelling, of only small charged particles (α and β). How then did one explain the formation of an element which was, as far as could be determined, identical to barium (Z = 56), and thus much smaller than uranium?" (Nature Physics Portal)  "Experiments conducted in 1938 at Berlin by Hahn and Strassmann were reported to Lise Meitner, an Austrian scientist who had fled to… Read More

[London: Macmillan, 1939. First edition. THE DISCOVERY OF NUCLEAR FISSION - PMM 422b. First edition, extremely rare offprints, of the discovery of nuclear fission, a process which had been observed by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann the previous year but for which they were unable to provide an explanation. "In the late 1930s, a series of experiments showed that bombarding uranium with neutrons produced several new radioactive elements, which were assumed to have atomic numbers near to that of uranium (Z = 92). This assumption followed naturally from the prevailing view of nuclear decay, which involved the emission, through tunnelling, of only small charged particles (α and β). How then did one explain the formation of an element which was, as far as could be determined, identical to barium (Z = 56), and thus much smaller than uranium?" (Nature Physics Portal)  "Experiments conducted in 1938 at Berlin by Hahn and Strassmann were reported to Lise Meitner, an Austrian scientist who had fled to… Read More