Search Results: Titles starting with I from SOPHIA RARE BOOKS

Berlin: Weidmann, 1932. First edition. PARITY AND TIME-REVERSAL IN QUANTUM MECHANICS. First edition, very rare offprints, of these two fundamental papers in quantum mechanics, the "invention of spatial parity as a quantum mechanical conserved quantity [I] [and the] introduction of the time inversion transformation in quantum mechanics [II]" (). "Wigner was invited to Göttingen in 1927 to become Hilbert's assistant. Hilbert, already interested in quantum mechanics, felt that he needed a physicist as an assistant to complement his own expertise. This was an important time for Wigner who produced papers of great depth and significance, introducing in his paper 'On the conservation laws of quantum mechanics' (1927) [I] the new concept of parity" (). "Wigner performed pioneering work by studying such symmetries in the laws of motion for the electrons and had made important discoveries by investigating e.g., those symmetries which express the fact that the laws mentioned make no difference between left… Read More

Edinburgh: [Neill & Co. for] Caddell and Davies; William Creech, 1802. EVANS 66 - "OF THIS GREAT CLASSIC IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SPEAK TOO HIGHLY" First edition of "one of the most conspicuous landmarks in the progress of British geology" (DSB). "Of this great classic it is impossible to speak too highly. For precision of statement and felicity of language it has no superior in English scientific literature." (Evans). Playfair (1748-1819) was Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh from 1785 to 1805. In 1795 he published an important edition of Euclid, containing an original formulation of the fifth postulate. "Playfair's fame as a scientist, however, rests almost entirely on his work in geology -hardly a "professional" study at the time - in presenting Hutton's momentous theory in a clear and palatable form (which Hutton himself had failed to do), and in adding materially to the geological knowledge of the time" (DSB). "Playfair's exposition and development of James Hutton's Uniformitarian theory of the… Read More

Paris: Melchior Mondiere, 1625. First edition. Hardcover. EDITIO PRINCEPS OF EUCLID'S DATA. 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 biographer of Proclus. Although the importance of the first printing of any Euclidean text goes without saying, the work is of particular interest given contemporary developments in French geometry - Descartes, Mersenne, Fermat, etc., to whose circle the translator Claude Hardy belonged. Euclid's Data opens with the passive perfect participle 'δεδομενα,' which means 'given'; its Latin form 'data' remained in the title in modern times. "The Data ... is closely connected with books I-VI of the Elements. It is concerned with the different senses in which things are said to be given. Thus areas, straight lines, angles, and ratios are said to be… Read More

Pesaro; Bologna: apud Hieronymum Concordiam; Costantino Pisarri, 1711. First edition. Hardcover. THE GREATEST OPUS OF 16TH CENTURY MECHANICS. First edition, the beautiful Macclesfield copy, of Guidobaldo's Paraphrasis, the important companion to his Mechanicorum liber (1577), regarded as the greatest work on statics since the Greeks, which employed the mathematically rigorous proofs of Archimedes to the investigation of problems in mechanics. "This work complements the Mechanicorum liber, and together they represent the greatest opus of 16th century mechanics" (Roberts & Trent, p. 13). They had a profound and lasting impact on the methodology adopted by contemporary century Italian scientists, most notably Galileo: "Guidobaldo was Galileo's patron and friend and was possibly the greatest single influence on the mechanics of Galileo" (DSB). The Mechanicorum liber had reduced the study of simple machines to the law of the lever, according to which bodies balance on the ends of a lever when their… Read More

Nuremberg: Jo. Stuchs, 1514. First edition. Hardcover. THE WERNER MAP PROJECTION. First edition of Werner's "most famous work on astronomy and geography" (MacTutor), an extremely rare and highly influential work on cartography and navigation, notable for several 'firsts': it contains the first published direct translation of any part of Ptolemy's Geography from the original Greek; the first publication of the Werner map projection, which was widely used for world and continental maps through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notably by Mercator, Oronce Finé and Ortelius; the invention of the lunar distance method of longitude determination, which was the principal method used by navigators until the second half of the 18th century; and the invention, and first illustration, of the cross-staff, an instrument designed to make the necessary astronomical observations at sea. "Werner's mathematical and astronomical work has been quite undeservedly neglected by historians" (North, p. 61). Werner… Read More

New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1966. First edition. THE GREATEST ADVANCE IN THE FOUNDATIONS OF SET THEORY SINCE ITS AXIOMATIZATION" (KURT GÖDEL). First edition, extremely rare offprints, of Cohen's proof that the continuum hypothesis (CH) and the axiom of choice (AC) cannot be proved from the generally accepted Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms (ZF) of set theory; the method of 'forcing' which Cohen devised for the purposes of his proof revolutionized the subsequent development of set theory. Kurt Gödel wrote in 1964 that this work "no doubt is the greatest advance in the foundations of set theory since its axiomatization" (Gödel, Works 2, p. 270). Gödel had proved in 1938 that CH and AC cannot be disproved from ZF - Cohen's and Gödel's results together showed that CH and AC are independent of ZF. Gödel had, in fact, also proved that AC could not be proved from ZF, although he never published this result, but his methods had failed to establish this for CH. In 1878, German mathematician Georg Cantor put… Read More

Lancaster, PA: American Physical Society, 1945. First edition. EINSTEIN'S 'SWISS-CHEESE' MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE - OFFPRINT ISSUE. First edition, extremely rare offprints, of Einstein & Straus's introduction of the 'Swiss-cheese' model of the universe. "After [a] decade and a half of sometimes intense work on cosmology, Einstein returned to the subject only occasionally in his later years. His most significant later contribution was a discussion of the impact of cosmological expansion on the gravitational field surrounding a star [i.e., the offered papers] ... This was an important first step in understanding the impact of global cosmological expansion on local physics" (Janssen & Lehner, pp. 257-8). In the 1920s and 1930s a general relativistic model of the universe was developed, called the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) model, which correctly described the expansion of the universe, discovered by Edwin Hubble. But the FLRW model was 'homogeneous' - it described a universe which looks… Read More

Bath; Bath & London: printed by R. Cruttwell; and sold by Cadell and Davies; printed by R. Cruttwell & sold by Cadell and Davies, London, J. Collow, 1806. THE FIRST TO MAKE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ANGINA AND CORONARY HEART DISEASE. First edition, rare, of this work in which Parry was the first to make the connection between angina and coronary heart disease. "In this important contribution to the understanding of the coronary circulation, Parry ... reports on several patients suffering from what he termed 'syncope anginosa' and concludes that the condition is caused by disease of the coronary arteries" (Heirs of Hippocrates). He remarked in his case notes that angina most often occurred in obese males over 50 and his autopsies showed calcification in the coronary arteries. He read his paper on the topic before the Gloucester Medical Society in 1788 and it was published in 1799 as the offered work. Parry delayed publication because Edward Jenner had diagnosed John Hunter as having angina pectoris and… Read More

St. Petersburg: Academiae Imperialis Scientiarum, 1770. First edition. THE THIRD PART OF EULER'S GREAT TRILOGY ON THE CALCULUS. 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 aim to introduce and explain a consolidated scientific discipline to students. Instead, Euler's main goal in writing them was the constitution of analysis as a new and autonomous branch of mathematics which is independent of geometry and arithmetic" (Ferraro, p. 39). "The methods of indefinite integration in the Institutiones calculi integralis (I, 1768) are described by Euler in quite modern fashion and in a detail that practically exhausts all the cases in which the result of integration is expressible in elementary functions. He invented many of the methods himself; the expression… Read More

Münich: F. Straub for the Verlag der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1912. First edition. PMM 406 - 'One of the most beautiful discoveries in physics' (Einstein). First edition, very rare offprint issue, of Laue's Nobel Prize-winning report of "one of the most beautiful discoveries in physics" (Einstein). X-rays had been in wide use since their discovery in 1895 but their exact nature as electromagnetic waves of short wavelength was first elucidated by Laue and his collaborators in the present papers. Laue (1879-1960) had moved in 1909 from Berlin (where he was Planck's assistant) to Ludwig Maximillians University in Münich, where he was Arnold Sommerfeld's Privatdozent. In the spring of 1912 he was asked by Sommerfeld's doctoral student Paul Ewald a question about the arrangement of atoms in a crystal. In attempting to answer this question "Laue had the crucial idea of sending X-rays through crystals. At this time scientists were very far from having proven the supposition that… Read More

Paris: J. Jacquin, 1630. First edition. Hardcover. THE FIRST FRENCH TRANSLATION AND EXPOSITION OF VIÈTE. First edition, very rare, and in an unrecorded 1629 issue (usually dated 1630), of the first vernacular translation and exposition of Viète's In artem analyticum isagoge (Tours, 1591), the earliest work on symbolic algebra, here bound with a first edition of Vaulezard's translation of Viète's Zeteticorum libri quinque (Tours, 1593), which gives examples of the application of his 'analytic art' to problems from Diophantus' Arithmetica. The third work is a scathing criticism by Vaulezard of a later translation of the Isagoge, published in 1630, by Anthoine Vasset (generally believed to be a pseudonym for Claude Hardy); in a lengthy introduction to his translation, L'algèbre nouvelle de Mr. Viète (Paris: Rocolet, 1630), Vasset criticized Vaulezard's translation, to which Vaulezard responded in his Examen (thus, Vasset's translation definitely post-dates Vaulezard's). The greatest French… 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