Search Results: Authors starting with D from SOPHIA RARE BOOKS

Paris: Béthune and Plon for Susse frères and Delloye, 1839. First edition. DAGUERREOTYPE - "THE BEGINNINGS OF PHOTOGRAPHY" (HORBLIT) - THE TRUE FIRST PRINTING. First edition, the true first issue (see below), of Daguerre's exposition of his photographic process, "the beginnings of photography" (Horblit); this is an excellent unrestored copy in original printed wrappers, and very rare in this condition. "Perhaps no other invention ever captured the imagination of the public to such a degree and conquered the world with such lightning rapidity as the daguerreotype" (Gernsheim, p. 71). "The daguerreotype is a photographic image with a mirror-like surface on a silver or silver-coated copper plate. A unique photograph, the daguerreotype is not produced from a negative, and the final image appears either positive or negative depending on the angle of reflected light" (Hannavy, p. 365). Daguerre (1787-1851), a gifted set designer and creator of the famous Diorama, a picture show based on lighting effects,… Read More

Manchester: Printed by Harrison and Crosfield for Baldwin and Cradock, 1834. DALTON'S FIRST BOOK - INSCRIBED. Second edition (first, 1793), inscribed by Dalton, of Dalton's first book which, according to Dalton himself, "contained the germs of most of the ideas afterwards expanded by him into discoveries" (DNB V, 428-34). Dalton (1766-1844) is famous today for his atomic theory of matter, but this grew out of his early work on meteorology, which resulted in his Meteorological Observations and Essays. "It created little stir at first but contained original ideas that, together with Dalton's more developed articles, marked the transition of meteorology from a topic of general folklore to a serious scientific pursuit" (Britannica). In this book Dalton stated that "water evaporated is not chymically combined with the aerial fluids but exists as a peculiar fluid diffused amongst the rest," and that "when a particle of vapour exists between two particles of air let their equal and opposite pressures upon… Read More

Manchester: S. Russell for R. Bickerstaff, Strand, London; Russell & Allen for R. Bickerstaff, Strand, London; executors of S. Russell for George Wilson; John Harrison, 1840. First edition. EVANS 54 - THE ATOMIC THEORY OF MATTER. First edition, complete with all three parts inscribed by Dalton, and in original publisher's bindings with original printed spine labels, of his classic work on the atomic theory of matter. "Dalton reconstructed Newton's speculations on the structure of matter, and, applying them in a new form to chemistry, gave Lavoisier's reformation of that science a deeper significance" (PMM). "Dalton's chemical atomic theory was the first to give significance to the relative weights of the ultimate particles of all known compounds, and to provide a quantitative explanation of the phenomena of chemical reaction. Dalton believed that all matter was composed of indestructible and indivisible atoms of various weights, each weight corresponding to•one of the chemical elements, and that… Read More

London: John Murray, 1871. First edition. THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. First edition, second issue, presentation copy from the printer William Clowes the younger. The word 'evolution' appears here for the first time in any of Darwin's works, on page 2 of the first volume, 'that is to say before its appearance in the sixth edition of the Origin of species in the following year' (Freeman p 129). Darwin's second most important work, his seminal treatise on the evolution of man; this is a fine copy in original state, rare in this condition. "This is really two works. The first demolished the theory that the universe was created for Man, while in the second Darwin presented a mass of evidence in support of his earlier hypothesis regarding sexual selection ... In the Origin, Darwin had avoided discussing the place occupied by homo sapiens in the scheme of natural selection, stating only that 'light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.' Twelve years later he made good his promise with The Descent… Read More

Cambridge: [the University Press for the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1835. DARWIN'S FIRST SEPARATELY PRINTED WORK - INSCRIBED. First edition, very rare, inscribed by John Stevens Henslow, of Darwin's first separately printed work and his first account in print of his discoveries on the Beagle. "During his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle, Darwin maintained a correspondence with John Stevens Henslow, his mentor in natural history and lifelong friend; it was Henslow who had obtained for Darwin the post of ship's naturalist on the Beagle. The present pamphlet contains extracts made by Henslow from ten of Darwin's letters" (Norman). Henslow had this pamphlet printed without Darwin's knowledge for distribution amongst the members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society "in consequence of the interest which has been excited by some of the Geological notices which they contain, and which were read at a Meeting of the Society on the 16th of November 1835" (p. [1]), an act which secured Darwin's reputation… Read More

London: Henry Colburn, 1839. First edition. THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE. First edition, first issue, in original cloth. The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career" (Charles Darwin, Life and Letters I, p. 61). "The five years of the voyage were the most important event in Darwin's intellectual life and in the history of biological science. Darwin sailed with no formal scientific training. He returned a hard-headed man of science, knowing the importance of evidence, almost convinced that species had not always been as they were since the creation but had undergone change ... The experiences of his five years in the Beagle, how he dealt with them, and what they led to, built up into a process of epoch-making importance in the history of thought" (DSB). The third volume comprises Darwin's own journal of his voyage in the Beagle, which is the first issue of his first published book. It is "is undoubtedly the most often read and stands… Read More

London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans and Williams & Norgate, 1856. First edition. DARWIN ON PLANT GEOGRAPHY - PRESENTED BY HENSLOW. First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, and a remarkable association copy, of this important contribution of Darwin to biogeography. This copy was presented by John Stevens Henslow, perhaps the single most influential person in leading Darwin onto his remarkable path. "During his five-year journey around the world on HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin encountered many different landscapes and an enormous variety of flora and fauna. Some of his most vivid experiences were on the islands of the coast of South America, including the now-famous Galapagos archipelago. Darwin was fascinated by the geographic relationship between the South American coast and its nearby islands; he puzzled over why plants and animals on nearby islands were similar to those on the mainland. Darwin was not satisfied by the traditional explanation provided by many naturalists of his… Read More

[Lyon]: Guillaume Huyon for Constantin Fradin, 1520. First edition. Hardcover. THE FIRST PUBLISHED WORK ON ALGEBRA IN FRENCH. First edition, extremely rare, of the first published work on algebra in French. This is a fine copy in a beautiful contemporary binding. Born in Lyon, then the principal commercial centre of France, La Roche was a student of Nicolas Chuquet and published for the first time in the present work large sections from Chuquet's Le Triparty en la Science des Nombres, the most original mathematical work of the fifteenth century. Chuquet's work, of which a single manuscript survives (BNF Fonds français 1346), remained unpublished until 1881. La Roche's work thus printed for the first time several important innovations in arithmetic and algebra introduced by Chuquet: the use of exponents to denote powers of a number, often credited to Descartes who introduced them in his Géométrie more than a century later; the use of the 'second unknown' (see below) in the solution of systems of… Read More

Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg, 1872. First edition. Hardcover. A LANDMARK WORK ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Dedekind's great work on the foundations of mathematics. "This short work [Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen] marks a significant epoch in the movement known as the arithmetization of analysis, that is, the replacement of intuitive geometric notions by concepts described in precise words" (Landmark Writings, p. 553). "This article, whose central idea was worked out by Dedekind while he was teaching in Zürich in 1858, presents a rigorous arithmetical foundation for the theory of real numbers ... Despite Dedekind's assertion in the introductory paragraphs of Continuity and irrational numbers that he originally did not publish his theory because he did not regard it as being very fruitful, it laid the foundations for much of modern-day real analysis and point-set topology" (Ewald, pp. 765-6). No copies listed on ABPC/RBH. "In 1858, Dedekind had… Read More

Paris: Antoine Dezallier, 1679. DESARGUES ON PERSPECTIVE - ONLY TWO OTHER COPIES KNOWN. First and only edition, incredibly rare, of the last (surviving) contribution published by the brilliant French mathematician Girard Desargues in the notorious 'perspective wars' - Desargues was "the greatest perspectivist and projective geometer of his generation" (Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 120). Desargues published his works in very small editions, mostly for his friends and scientific colleagues. Today more than half of them are lost, and the survivors are of the greatest rarity, most known in just one or two copies. Desargues' bio-bibliographer Poudra believed the Six erreurs to be lost, but two other copies are known today, both in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It is likely that our copy of Six erreurs is the only work published by Desargues now in private hands. We know of no copy of any original work of Desargues having appeared on the market for at least a century. In 1636 Desargues… Read More

Leiden: Jan Maire, 1637. First edition. PMM 129 - THE INVENTION OF ANALYTIC GEOMETRY. First edition, a fine, large copy, of Descartes' first and most famous work. Following the Discours, now celebrated as one of the canonical texts of Western philosophy, are three 'Essais', the last of which, La Géométrie, contains the birth of analytical or co-ordinate geometry, "of epoch-making importance" (Cajori, History of Mathematics, p. 174), designated by John Stuart Mill as "the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences". It "rendered possible the later achievements of seventeenth-century mathematical physics" (Hall, Nature and nature's laws (1970), p. 91). The first of the Essais, La Dioptrique, contains Descartes' discovery of 'Snell's law' of refraction of light (earlier than Snell); the second, Les Météores, contains Descartes' explanation of the rainbow, based on the optical theories developed in the first Essai. "It is no exaggeration to say that Descartes was the first… Read More

London: Abell Jeffes, 1591. First edition. the first serious ballistic studies in England" (DSB). Second and best edition of this important Elizabethan work on practical geometry, in which "for the first time, we have indications of an instrument which we may call a reflecting telescope" (King, The History of the Telescope, p. 29). This second edition contains several appendices by Thomas Digges, not present in the first edition, which constitute "the first serious ballistic studies in England" (DSB). The book also contains the first description and illustration of the theodolite. The first edition is an extremely rare book - no copy has sold at auction since the Kenney copy in 1966 (and that copy was defective). "This edition is essentially identical to the first with two significant additions by Thomas Digges: the 'Mathematicall discourse of the five Platonicall solid' and the first treatment of the science of ballistics in English. Also added to Book I is a short chapter (three leaves) on… 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

London: Harrison & Sons for the Royal Society, 1930. First edition. ANTIMATTER. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of Dirac's prediction of antimatter - although he did not accept it as such until a year later (see below) - and the advent of the dynamical view of the vacuum which was fundamental to the later development of quantum field theory. "The consensus among today's scientists is that Dirac's role in foreseeing the existence of the positron is one of the greatest achievements in science. In 2002, shortly after the centenary of Dirac's birth, the theoretical physicist Kurt Gottfried went further: 'Physics has produced other far-fetched predictions that have subsequently been confirmed by experiment. But Dirac's prediction of anti-matter stands alone in being motivated solely by faith in pure theory, without any hint from data, and yet revealing a deep and universal property of nature'" (Farmelo, p. 226). One troubling consequence of the famous Dirac relativistic wave equation was that it… Read More

Prague: Gottlieb Haase & Sons, 1846. First edition. PHOTOMETRY IN ASTROPHYSICS. First edition, very rare separately-paginated offprint, of this important complement to Doppler's epoch-making discovery in 1842 of the principle named after him. The three articles comprising this offprint contain extensions of the Doppler principle, as well as the first suggestion to use photographic and photometric methods for the determination of the sizes and distances of stars. "Doppler's scientific fame rests on his enunciation of the Doppler principle, which relates the observed frequency of a wave to the motion of the source or the observer relative to the medium in which the wave is propagated. This appears in his article 'Ueber das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des Himmels' (read 25 May 1842). The correct elementary formula is derived for motion of source or of observer along the line between them; the extension to the motion of both at the same time appears in an article of 1846… Read More