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.-
MAPLET, John, and W.H. DAVIES (editor).
A greene Forest, or a naturall Historie, wherein may bee seene first the...
London, Hesperides Press, 1930.
Limited edition, numbered 31 of fifty copies on Millbourne pure rag hand-made paper, signed by Davies.
£75
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ANDREWS, Mark E.
The Science and Engineering of Materials: A Theatre of Machine Books, 1472–1800.
Toronto, AE Publications, 2023.
An extraordinary survey of four centuries of machine books, tracing the evolution of printing techniques and draughtsmanship alongside the development of the machines themselves. In this catalogue of eighty-six works from his collection of books on civil engineering, Mark Andrews situates a series...
£85
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ANDREWS, Mark.
The Science and Engineering of Water. An illustrated Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts on Hydraulics north of the...
Toronto, AE Publications, 2024.
An extensively illustrated catalogue of books, maps, and drawings on the science and engineering of water from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth, utilised by practitioners in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, the New World, and East Asia.
£85
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ANDREWS, Mark E.
The Science and Engineering of Water: An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics,...
Toronto, A.E. Publications, 2022.
A lavishly illustrated catalogue, tracing the development of science and engineering through the early modern period. Some 367 printed books, manuscripts, and maps are presented in chronological order, highlighting the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented...
£85
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ADAMS, John Couch.
The scientific Papers … edited by William Grylls Adams … with a Memoir by J.W.L. Glaisher.
Cambridge, University Press, 1896 [– 1900].
First edition of the posthumously published collected papers of the Cambridge mathematician and astronomer, John Couch Adams (1819–1892). ‘In retrospect Adams’ many mathematical and astronomical achievements pale in comparison to his analysis of the orbit of Uranus and his prediction of...
£175
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MÖSSBAUER, Rudolf Ludwig.
‘Kernresonanzabsorption von Gammstrahlung in Ir191’ [in: Die Naturwissenschaften … fünfundvierzigster...
Berlin, Springer, November 1958.
First appearance of Mössbauer’s PhD work on the recoilless nuclear fluorescence of gamma rays in 191 iridium, later named the Mössbauer effect, which involves the recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma radiation by an atomic nucleus bound in a solid. The effect was later used by Robert...
£200
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FRONTINUS, Sextus Julius.
Sexti Julii Frontini, viri consularis, quae extant. Robertus Keuchenius, S. F. notis et emendationibus...
Amsterdam, Johann à Waesberge, 1661.
The collected works of the first-century civil engineer and Roman general Frontinus, one-time governor of Roman Britain, edited and with extensive notes by the Dutch historian Robert Keuchen (1636–1673).
£250
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STENUIT, Alfred, and G. de VOGHEL.
Manuel de sauvetage dans les mines. Notions théoriques sur les accidents et le sauvetage....
Tamines, Duculot-Roulin, 1909.
Only edition of this attractively illustrated and very rare guide to life-saving in mines, by the Belgian mining engineers Stenuit and de Voghel. Divided into three parts, the book opens with explanations of the possible hazards, ranging from asphyxiation to explosions and underground fires, as...
£350
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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...
£350
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CREVE, Carl Caspar.
Vom Metallreize, einem neuentdeckten untrüglichen Prüfungsmittel des wahren Todes. Mit einer Kupfertafel.
Leipzig and Gera, Wilhelm Heinsius, 1796.
First edition of this uncommon contribution to the medical literature in which Creve proposes a new method of ascertaining death using a metal conductor attached to muscle tissue, part of the body of research that inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
£550
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[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
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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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[OPTICAL PRINT.]
‘No. 5. Morgan’s improved protean scenery: Mount Vesuvius, as represented at the Surrey Zoological Gardens...
London, Published by W. Morgan, [c. 1837].
A remarkable metamorphic or ‘protean’ print depicting a dormant Vesuvius by day but, when held up to the light, showing a dramatic eruption in the night sky.
£675
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SCHÖFFLER, Benedict.
Die Phototelegraphie und das Elektrische Fernsehen.
Wien und Leipzig, Wilhelm Braumüller, 1898.
A treatise by a German artillery officer on the electrical transmission of images, occasioned by newspaper reports of Jan Szczepanik’s invention. ‘On February 24, 1897, Jan Szczepanik and Ludwig Kleinberg of Austria applied for a patent for a method and apparatus for reproducing pictures and the...
£750
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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
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MORTON, John.
The natural History of Northampton-Shire, with some Account of the Antiquities, to which is annex’d a Transcript...
London, R. Knaplock and R. Wilkin, 1712.
First edition of Morton’s systematic natural history of Northamptonshire. Compiled over the course of a decade, Morton’s Natural History provides a careful account of the natural history, minerals, fossils, and geography of the county, accompanied by fourteen large copper-engravings....
£775
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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
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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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[GUARINI, Giambattista Lascaris].
Ragionamenti filosofici.
Rome, Gioacchino Puccinelli, 1785[-6].
Only edition, very uncommon, of this collection of 33 essays on scientific and philosophical subjects, published with the aspiration to provide a complete course of physics and philosophy. The work is divided into four parts. The first deals with materialism and idealism, the physical attributes of bodies,...
£875
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TALIANI, Giuseppe.
Orologi riflessi, per mezo di un picciolo specchio parallelo o perpendicolare all’orizonte.
Macerata, Filippo Camacci, 1648.
Only recorded edition, rare, of this work by mathematician Taliani on the construction of sundials in the interior of buildings, to be achieved through mirrors reflecting solar rays – our copy uniquely furnished with a contemporary large hand-drawn representation of the face of a sundial. ...
£950