PRESTET, Jean. Nouveaux elemens des mathematiques ou principes generaux de toutes les sciences qui ont les grandeurs pour objet. 1689.
PRESTET, Jean.
Nouveaux elemens des mathematiques ou principes generaux de toutes les sciences qui ont les grandeurs pour objet.
Paris, André Pralard, 1689.
Two 4to (253x187 mm), (32)-588 pages, one table and one folding plate / (12)-492-(1)-(1 bl.) pages, one table and one folding plate. binding : Contemporary full sheep, spine gilt in six compartments, title and volume number in gilt on lettering-pieces. Binding rubbed, caps and corners worn. A few light staining. Without the first free endpaper.
Second enlarged edition.
This edition is important because Prestet gives (Volume 1 p.140 to p.150) for the first time his some early work on the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.
references: Goldstein [in. Historia Mathematica 19 (1992), p.177-187 : "On a Seventeenth century Version of the Fondamental Theorem of arithmetic..." "in spite of what might appear to a modern reader to be a clumsy and too restrictive or too vague formulation, this result, (...), is of course equivalent to the uniqueness of the prime factorization. "], Agargün & Özkan [in Historia Mathematica, 28 (2001). Page 211 : "Some results published by Jean Prestet in his 1689 Nouveaux Elemens de Mathématiques [Goldstein 1992] confirm that before modern times a prime factorization was not looked upon as something of interest in its own right, but as a means of finding divisors. Prestet stated neither the existence nor the uniqueness of the FTA. He was influenced by Euclid and was concerned with divisors (...) he gave the main results in order to find all the divisors of a given number. In particular his Corollary IX has a significant role. This result makes us believe that Prestet knew the FTA. We think he could have proved it, but he was not concerned with it."].
provenance: Arnault. Des eaux et forets du Roy (ownership inscription on the paste-down endpaper).
Price : 1200 €
