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All our Scientific books

Are you passionate about the history of science?
You will certainly find a book for you among our rare books and manuscripts of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry or Natural Sciences.
The famous names in science are present on our shelves: Euclid, Newton, Darwin, Pascal, Lavoisier and also those who have participated in scientific progress.

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Photo GALOIS, Évariste. 

First edition of collected mathematical works of Evariste Galois given by Liouville in this volume of the Journal de Mathématiques pures et appliquées .

A brilliant mathematician, misunderstood in his day and with a tragic fate (he died at the age of 20 in a gallant duel), Galois created the notion of group, and his work has inspired generations of mathematicians.
A brilliant student, he was misunderstood by his contemporaries. Poisson rejected the work he wanted to present to the Paris Academy of Sciences.
In 1832, on the eve of his fatal duel, Galois wrote his mathematical will, which he entrusted to a friend.
It was not until 1846 that Liouville published them in this volume of the Journal des mathématiques, and not until 1870 that Jordan recognized their importance.

"When, yielding to the wish of Evariste's friends, I gave myself up, as it were under the eyes of his brother, to the attentive study of all the printed or manuscript pieces he left behind, I therefore thought I had to propose as my sole aim to seek out, to unravel, to then bring out as best I could, what was new in these productions.

My zeal was soon rewarded, and I was delighted when, after filling in a few small gaps, I recognized the complete accuracy of the method by which Galois proves, in particular, this beautiful theorem: For an irreducible equation of prime degree to be solvable by radicals, it is necessary and sufficient that all the roots be rational functions of any two of them'.
This method, truly worthy of the attention of geometers, would alone suffice to secure our compatriot a place among the small number of scientists who have earned the title of inventor." (Liouville p.382).

Photo DESCARTES, René. 

First edition.
Very rare copy with title page in unlisted condition in the name of Jacques Le Gras.

Descartes wrote this treatise in 1632 and 1633. He defended in particular the heliocentric system of Copernicus, but following Galileo's condemnation, he gave up publishing this work during his lifetime. It will not be finally published, according to his will, until after his death. At the end of 1663, the Le Gras and Clerselier family will dispute the privilege of publishing the posthumous works of Descartes. For the "World" it is Jacques Le Gras who will be the first to deposit the privilege. (cf. CARTESIAN BULLETIN V. (1976). Archives de Philosophie, 39 (3), 445–494) Jacques Le Gras, the holder of the privilege, then shared it with Thomas Girard (his brother-in-law) and Michel Bobin.

Our title page is unknown to Tchermerzine and Guibert as well as to Mathias Van Otegem who in his bibliography of the works of Descartes published in 2002, after consulting the copies in public libraries, describes only four states of the title page of this edition.
Our copy therefore presents a fifth state of the still unpublished title page.
Our title page has the same typographical mark as the Thomas Girad state (6 fleurons) canonically considered to adorn the true first edition. In addition, like the copy "Thomas Girad" from the Munich library (BSB: Rar. 4594) our title page is margined shorter than the rest of the book body and printed with the same characters, which suggests an impression at the same time.
The copies having a recomposed title page with a typographical mark "à l'oiseau" only coming, according to bibliographers, in a second step.

"In Le Monde, Descartes wants to ruin the concepts of scholasticism, and 'evacuate' Aristotle's physics, by giving a physical interpretation of the new heliocentric astronomy. As opposed to traditional finalism, he envisions, in the form of a "Fable", the mechanical formation of the cosmos, from an initial state of chaos (pieces of matter of various shapes and sizes agitated by all-out movements) and only by virtue of the general laws of nature: principle of inertia, laws of the communication of movement, etc ... "Robert Maggiori, Liberation, 26.

Photo CHAPTAL, Jean-Antoine. 

First edition of the first work of Chaptal.
First volume, only published.
After three years spent in Paris (1777-1780), Chaptal was offered in 1780 a chair of chemistry at the Royal Society of Sciences of Montpellier.
"It was from this moment that Chaptal's brilliant career in science began.
The revolution in chemistry was at hand. However, the old doctrine of phlogiston still prevailed and it was this doctrine that Chaptal taught at first and in his first courses that he took up in his first work. He then quickly rallied to the ideas developed by Lavoisier. "(Flourens. Eloge de Chaptal. 1835)
Rare (missing from the main collections on chemistry : Duveen, Ferguson, Neville ...)

Bound with :
- POULLE. Positiones chemico-medicae de Aere Vitali. Montpellier, Picot, 1784. 64 pages (a lack in the margin of page 41). Rare work on the chemical and medical properties of oxygen and its preparation. First edition.
- BERTHOLON. Des avantages que la physique et les arts qui en dépendent peuvent retirer des globes aérostatiques...Montpellier, Jean Martel Aîné, 1784. 82 pages. First edition.
- LAFFECTEUR. Rapport sur l'analyse du Rob Antisyphillitique. 1779. Ph. D. Pierres, Paris. 24 pages. First edition.
- GUER. [Dissertation physique & botanique sur la maladie nephretique et sur son véritable spécifique, le Raisin d'Ours]. 1768, Bauer, Strasbourg. 98 pages and 1 folding plate. Bound without the title page and the privilege.
- GOUBERT. Description et usage des baromètres, thermomètres et autres instrumens météorologiques. 1781. Jombert, Paris. 52 pages and 1 folding table. First edition

A presentation copy to the botanist of Dijon Jean-François Durande, for the second work (Poulle).

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