Description:
4to, pp. [ii], 322, [1] avis au relieur, [1] blank; with five folding leaves of plates; engraved vignette on title, headpiece, and initial; some light dustsoiling and foxing, principally marginal, in places, and wormtrace to a couple of gatherings, not affecting text but touching the edge of Plate III; otherwise clean and fresh throughout; with the stamp of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on title, front pastedown, and front free endpaper; in contemporary calf, rebacked; spine in compartments with raised bands, ruled in gilt, and with title in gilt and the crest of the Royal Society of Edinburgh at foot; boards bordered in gilt; somewhat worn but sound.First edition of Euler's pioneering work on the calculus of variations, which constitutes the founding text of that branch of mathematics.
Euler had explored the subject of the shortest line between two points on a surface in a 1732 article (De linea brevissima in superficie quacunque duo quaelibet puncta jungente) but there he addressed individual… Read More
