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.
  1. 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

  2. LAEMMEL, Rudolf.

    Untersuchungen über die Ermittlung von Wahrscheinlichkeiten.

    Zurich, Jean Frey, 1904.

    The doctoral dissertation of Rudolf Laemmel, produced under the auspices of Burkhardt of Zurich, and the first attempt at founding probability theory on set theory and measure theory (the axiomatization of probability). The work discusses the rules of total and compound probability as axioms. The rule...

    £250

  3. LAMB, Sir Horace.

    Autograph letter, signed, to Thomas Bromwich.

    6 Wilbraham Road, Fallowfield, Manchester, 9 March 1916.

    A letter from Sir Horace Lamb (1849–1934) to fellow mathematician Thomas Bromwich. Lamb held the chair of pure mathematics at Owens College, Manchester, from 1885 until 1920. He ‘was a talented and inspiring teacher, whose lectures to generations of mathematics, engineering, and physics students...

    £125

  4. L’HÔPITAL, Guillaume François Antoine, marquis de

    Analyse des infiniment petits, pour l’intelligence des lignes...

    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. 

    £3500

  5. [MABBUT, George].

    Sir Isaac Newton’s tables for renewing and purchasing the leases of cathedral-churches and colleges, according...

    London, printed for Thomas Astley, 1742

    Sixth edition, first published in 1686, this issue was sometimes also published with a separate title page and imprint reading, ‘The money’d man’s pocket-book’, London, 1742’ immediately preceding the title-page of the second part. A series of tables calculating the amounts owed on leases based...

    £125

  6. 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

  7. MEITNER, Lise, and Otto R. FRISCH. 

    On the Products of the Fission of Uranium and Thorium under Neutron Bombardment. 

    Copenhagen, Ejnar Munksgaard, 1939. 

    First edition of this highly important paper, published in Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab.  Mathematisk-Fysiske Meddelelser, vol. 17, no. 5. 

    £850

  8. MITTAG-LEFFLER, Gösta.

    Sur la représentation analytique d’une branche uniforme d’une fonction monogène.

    Stockholm, 1899-1909.

    First edition of this important series of papers by Mittag-Leffler, offprints from Acta Mathematica, the international mathematical journal established by him in 1882.

    £750

  9. NEWTON, Isaac.

    Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light. Also two treatises of...

    London, for Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, printers to the Royal Society, 1704.

    First edition of Newton’s Opticks, ‘which did for light what his Principia had done for gravitation, namely, placed it on a scientific basis’, and ‘expounds Newton’s corpuscular or emission theory of light, and first contains his important optical discoveries in a collected...

    £70000

  10. PONCELET, Jean-Victoire.

    Traité des propriétés projectives des figures, ouvrage utile à ceux qui s’occupent des applications...

    Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1865-1866.

    Second edition, revised and enlarged, Émile Borel’s prize copy. A finely bound, well-preserved, and prestigious association set.

    Borel (1871–1956), the French mathematician best known for his work in measure theory and probability theory, was awarded several honours in the early...

    £950

  11. RAYLEIGH, John William Strutt, Baron.

    Two autograph letters, signed, to the mathematician Thomas Bromwich.

    Terling Place, Witham, Essex, 19 June 1916, and 4 Carlton Gardens, Pall Mall, London, 7 March 1917.

    In the first, brief, letter, written from Rayleigh’s home at Witham in Essex and dated 19 June 1916, Rayleigh agrees to forward a paper to the Royal Society: ‘I will gladly communicate Mr White’s paper to R. S. The extension of what I did is interesting, and he points out a stupid mistake of mine...

    £750

  12. RIEMANN, Georg Friedrich Bernhard.

    Ein Beitrag zu den Untersuchungen über die Bewegung eines flüssigen gleichartigen Ellipsoids.

    Göttingen, Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, 1861.

    the very rare offprint issue from the abhandlungen der königlichen gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttigen of riemann’s classic paper on rotating liquid ellipsoids, containing solutions of the equations of fluid dynamics that were later applied to the physics of rotating stars by chandrasekhar...

    £750

  13. [ROYAL PRUSSIAN SOCIETY OF SCIENCES.] 

    Miscellanea berolinensia ad incrementum scientiarum, ex scriptis societati regiae scientiarum...

    Berlin, Johann Christoph Papen, 1723. 

    First continuation of Leibniz’s Miscellanea berolinensia First appearing in 1710, the publication of the Miscellanea was revived in 1723 as the official journal of the Royal Prussian Society of Sciences after the death of Leibniz, its founding President.  The Continuatio comprises...

    £575

  14. 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

  15. TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.

    Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.

    [(Colophon:) 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