Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546. 

First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations. 

£6750

Dijon, Auxerre, Paris and Liège, F. Desventes, F. Fournier, et al., 1754-86.

The scarce first collected edition of these scientific papers from all over Europe (lacking only the last five volumes of the Partie Française), including among its contributors such famous names as Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Hevelius, De La Hire, Mariotte, Réaumur, La Condamine, Haller, Maupertuis, Boyle,...

£6000

Antwerp, 1753.

A handsome manuscript comprising a thorough course in logic and dialectic, executed by a student at the Jesuit college in Antwerp, and illustrated with an extraordinary decorative programme inspired by printed emblems.

£4750

Venice, Bernardino Vitali, 17 February 1501. 

Rare first edition, the Erwin Tomash copy, with numerous early marginalia showing a close analysis by a near-contemporary reader. 

£4500

Paris, chez les frères Guerin, 1746.

A large, crisp and illustrious copy of the first edition of a classic of statistical science: it is the first to define expectation of life – which Deparcieux calls ‘la vie moyenne’ – and the first to contain life tables for men and women.

£3000

Venice, Francesco Franceschi, 1587. 

First Italian edition of the works of Finé.  Among the most influential scientific scholars of the sixteenth century, over three decades at the Collège Royale Oronce Finé (1494–1555) made considerable contributions to various branches of mathematics, from geometry and arithmetic to astronomy...

£2750

Bologna, heirs Dozza, [1655–] 1656. 

A substantial volume of Galileo’s works, comprising most of the first volume of the first collected edition, edited by Carlo Manolessi.  The edition contained nineteen separate treatises, each with its own title, in two volumes, but is rarely found complete; present here are all but two of...

£2500

Paris, Jean Guignart, Charles Savreaux, and Jean de Launay, 1662.

Scarce first edition of the work known as the Port Royal Logic. The authors were leaders of the Port Royal movement, and the book displays the distinctive tone of earnest piety for which the movement became famous. La Logique was the most famous logic text of the seventeenth century and set the form...

£1750

Jenae, Johann Bielke, 1676.

First edition of a pioneering work of statistics and rare Americanum, by the philosopher and historian Johann Andreas Bose (1624-1674). Bose’s crucial intuition as a student of human societies lies in his advocacy of interdisciplinary investigations. His work ‘on all the states in the world’ marshalls...

£1500

Perth, 1780s?

A particularly attractive manuscript schoolbook from Perth Academy (founded 1696).