Science
Contact Andrea Mazzocchi
Science at Quaritch is broadly defined, ranging from medicine, anatomy, pharmacology (including herbals) and natural history to astronomy, physics, chemistry and mathematics.
An interest in the origins of modern chemistry has led to a specialisation in works on alchemy and distillation, and from there we have also branched out into occultism and hermeticism. We have developed an interest in gastronomy and books on nutrition and wine, an area which over the years has become one of our specialities.-
HODSON, Thomas.
The Accomplished Tutor; or, complete System of liberal Education … Embellished with twenty Copper-plates and...
London, H. D. Symonds, and Vernor and Hood, 1802.
Second edition, revised, of a voluminous catch-all schoolbook (first published 1800), by the disabled author Thomas Hodson, of the Middle Temple.
£300
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HOPKINS, William.
Address delivered at the Hull Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, September...
London, Taylor & Francis, 1853.
First edition, an 1853 Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science by its President William Hopkins (1793–1866), inscribed by the author and given to his erstwhile student Francis Galton (1822–1911). A mathematician and geologist, Hopkins became President of the British Association...
£350
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EUCLID.
Στοιχειων βιβλ. ιε εκ των θεωνος συνουσιων. Εις του αυτου του πρωτον,...
Basel, Johannes Herwagen, September 1533.
Editio princeps of Euclid, the ‘oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today’ (PMM), a work which ‘has exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible’ (DSB).
£18000
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SMITH, Samuel.
Aditus ad logicam. In usum eorum qui primò Academiam salutant. … Editio sexta.
Oxford, Henry Hall for Richard Davis, 1649.
A sammelband of two seventeenth-century student texts on logic, issued together and rather unusually combining Oxford and London imprints, this copy with contemporary Cambridge provenance.
£675
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L’HÔPITAL, Guillaume François Antoine, marquis de.
Analyse des infiniment petits, pour l’intelligence des lignes courbes...
Paris, François Montalant, 1715.
Second edition (first 1696) of l’Hôpital’s famous Analyse, the first textbook on differential calculus, inspired by the work of Leibniz and the Bernoulli brothers, this copy profusely annotated by an anonymous but proficient eighteenth-century mathematician.
£2750
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[ARISTOTLE – ELIAS.]
Biblioteca Armeno-Georgica. I. Commentarii in Aristotelis Categorias Eliae commentatori adscripti versio...
St Petersburg, Academiae Imperialis Scientarum, 1911.
Uncommon edition, published by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, of the Armenian translation of the commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories by the sixth-century Christian philosopher and commentator Elias.
£250
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SACCHI, Giovenale.
Del numero e delle misure delle corde musiche e loro corrispondenze. Dissertazione del P. D. Giovenale...
Milan, [Giuseppe Mazzucchelli (colophon),] 1761.
First edition of Sacchi’s first work: a theoretical study of music and acoustic from a mathematical and physical perspective built upon the most innovative eighteenth-century physics.
£850
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BROGGI, Ugo.
Die Axiome der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung.
Göttingen, Dieterischen Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1907.
Rare first edition of this doctoral dissertation on the solution of Hilbert’s sixth problem, written under the supervision of David Hilbert.
£200
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KNAPP, Georg Friedrich.
Die neuern Ansichten über Moralstatistik …
Jena, Friedrich Mauke, 1871.
First edition of a lecture given on 29 April 1871 at the University of Leipzig, presentation copy, the title-page inscribed ‘Herrn Dr Adolf Mayer, freundschaftlich G.F. Knapp’.
£250
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BALLARIN, Vincenzo.
Dimostrazione sintetica della quadratura del circolo di Don Vincenzo Ballarin, piovano di S. Pietro della...
Venice, Fracasso, 1828.
First and only edition of this confident but mistaken attempt at squaring the circle – drawing a square with the same area as a given circle using a compass and straightedge – later proven to be impossible.
£900
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DEPARCIEUX, Antoine.
Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine; d’où l’on déduit la manière de déterminer...
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
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EUCLID; Jean MAGNIEN and Stephanus GRACILIS, editors.
Euclidis elementorum libri XV Graece et Latine, quibus, cum...
Paris, Guillaume Cavellat, 1557.
First edition of Euclid’s Elements as edited by Jean Magnien and Stephanus Gracilis, with woodcut diagrams throughout, this copy extensively annotated by a contemporary student.
£5500
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MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.
Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...
Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.
A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...
£650
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BOSE, Johann Andreas.
Io. Andr. Bosii introductio generalis in notitiam rerumpublicarum orbis universi. Accedunt eiusdem dissertationes...
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).
£1500
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QUETELET, M. A.
Letters Addressed to H. R. H. the Grand Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha on the Theory of Probabilities, as Applied...
London, Charles & Edwin Layton, 1849.
First edition in English. ‘This book is really an original, if elementary, treatise on probability and social statistics, written in the form of a series of letters to the Belgian king’s two nephews, Ernest (the duke to whom the book was dedicated) and Albert (who by 1846 was husband to Queen Victoria...
£550
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POPE, William.
Manuscript arithmetic schoolbook.
[Tiverton?] ‘Sunday Octr 24.th 1804’.
A manuscript arithmetic schoolbook belonging to one William Pope, very well preserved in its original stationery binding and wrapper, with provincially printed arithmetic tables as endpapers.
£850
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FINÉ, Oronce.
Opere di Orontio Fineo … divise in cinque parti, arimetica, geometria, cosmografia, e orivoli, tradotte da Cosimo...
Venice, Francesco Franceschi, 1587.
First edition in Italian of the works of Oronce Finé, including the translations of his Protomathesis (1532) on arithmetic, geometry, cosmography, and sundials, and De speculo ustorio (1551) on burning mirrors, the only time all five texts appear together in any vernacular language.
£2750
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KOCH, Manfred (pr.), Primo SCHLECHTEN and Feliciano SCHARRER (resp.).
Philosophia rationalis sive logica centum assertionibus comprehensa...
Augsburg, Afra Sturmin, 1695.
A good copy of this rare dissertation from the Augustinian college at Rottenbuch in Bavaria, attempting to reduce logic (the science of reasoning) to one hundred numbered paragraphs. Describing the function and limits of logic, the authors, both Austin canons at Rottenbuch, explain the use of syllogisms,...
£275
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GOSSELIN, Charles-Robert.
Plan d’éducation, en réponse aux académies de Marseille et de Châlons, dont l’une a proposé...
Amsterdam, 1785.
A most interesting sammelband of three rare French works on education from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, promoting, inter alia, the appointment of more women teachers, better education for girls, and the use of visual aids in teaching mathematics.
£875
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JEVONS, William Stanley.
‘Preliminary account of certain logical inventions’, communicated March 19th, 1866 [in: Proceedings...
London, Longman, Green, Reader, & Dyer; Liverpool, David Marples, 1867.
First edition of the account of Professor Jevons’ communication on the ‘logical abacus’ and the ‘logical machine’, a precursor of his later ‘logical piano’.
£350