Search Results: Titles starting with Q from SOPHIA RARE BOOKS

[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 FEYNMAN'S UNPUBLISHED LECTURES ON MESON THEORY.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

[London: Harrison & Sons for the Royal Society, 1927. First edition. THE BIRTH OF QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of Dirac's quantum theory of the electromagnetic field, which for the first time reconciled the wave and particle nature of light. "This paper marks the birth of quantum electrodynamics. In his 'Introduction and Summary,' Dirac noted that the new quantum theory, based on non-commuting dynamical variables, was by then sufficiently developed to form a 'fairly complete theory of any 'dynamical system' composed of a number of particles with instantaneous forces acting between them, provided it is describable by a Hamiltonian function.' But hardly anything had been done 'up to the present on quantum electrodynamics.' 'The questions of the correct treatment of a system in which the forces are propagated with the velocity of light instead of instantaneously, of the production of an electromagnetic field by a moving electron, and of the reaction of this field on… Read More

Venice: Giovanni Padovano for Curzio Troiano Navò, 1550. First edition. A MAJOR CATALYST FOR THE RESEARCHES OF GALILEO. First edition of Tartaglia's Quesiti, second edition of the other two works. The Quesiti continues the discussion of ballistics in Tartaglia's Nova scientia (first published in 1537), pointing out for the first time that the trajectory of a projectile is curved throughout (in the Nova Scientia he argued that the path of a projectile consisted of rectilinear parts at the beginning and end of the trajectory, with a curved part between). The Quesiti is also famous for containing Tartaglia's solution of cubic equations, which until a few years earlier had been considered impossible; he had kept it secret since discovering it in 1535 (Cardano had published Tartaglia's solution in his Artis magnae (1545), without his permission.) Tartaglia (1499-1557) "reshaped the character of military discourse by identifying a 'new science' of artillery and casting it as a mathematical discipline. As… Read More

Florence: Condotta, 1674. First edition. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY VIVIANI TO MARIOTTE. The true first edition, very rare, signed and inscribed by Viviani to Edme Mariotte, of this important Galileanum, an assembly of previously unpublished writings by Galileo, together with texts by Torricelli and Viviani himself. Most importantly, it contains the first printing of a Galileo manuscript concerned with the Eudoxian theory of proportion which may be regarded as a supplement to the Discorsi (1638); the manuscript had been given to Viviani (1622-1703), Galileo's distinguished pupil, amainuensis, and biographer, by Cardinal de' Medici. Galileo had composed this manuscript in response to Viviani's demand that Galileo provide a more secure geometrical basis for his theory of falling bodies. As Galileo wrote to Benedetto Castelli in 1639, 'Objections made to me many months ago by this young man [Viviani] who is now my guest and disciple, against that principle postulated by me in my treatise on accelerated… Read More