ARCHIMEDES/ed. RIVAULT, David ΑΡΧΙΜΗΔΟΥΣ ΠΑΝΤΑ ΣΩΖΟΜΕΝΑ. Archimedis Opera quae extant. Novis Demonstrationibus Commentariisque illustrata. Paris Claude Morel 1615
Folio [34.2 x 22.5 cm], (22) ff., 549 (i.e. 551, with frequent misnumberings) pp., including title printed in red and black, bilingual text in Greek and Latin in two columns, and numerous woodcut diagrams and illustrations. Bound in 18th-century (?) half calf, spine with raised bands and two stained title labels gilt, small worm traces at head of spine and covers. Ex libris of Co.Riccati on front pastedown. Small hole in f.i, affecting a few letters; tears in blank margin of ff. Aiiij, KKij; a few wormtracks in blank margins of initial and final leaves; light toning throughout, minor foxing and a few scattered spots. Nonetheless, (very) good.
First edition of the most influential seventeenth-century edition of Archimedes’ complete works. The work contains the Greek text with a Latin “trot” running alongside and has extensive exegetical notes. It was still regarded as the best edition in 1670 when Sturm made his German translation. “The success of the humanist mathematicians in uncovering, clarifying, translating and providing commentaries on the major scientific texts of the ancient authors should not be seen as peripheral to the scientific revolution. The mastery of the Greek and Latin texts was an essential stage in the attempt to ‘surpass the ancients,’ and the extensive publishing of new and better-understood texts by the classical mathematicians played an integral role in the founding of the ‘new sciences’” (Martin Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 76). Mathematician, courtier as well as man of letters—he was an intimate of the great classical scholars Casaubon and Scaliger—the editor Rivault (1571-1616) was tutor to Louis XIII. Jacopo Francesco Riccati (1676-1754), who owned this copy of the Opera, was a prominent Italian mathematician remembered for the differential equation that bears his name. Riccati corresponded with a large number of mathematicians across Europe, influencing Daniel Bernoulli and Euler in particular. Having turned down offers from Peter the Great to become President of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science, he remained in Italy, studying cycloidal pendulums, the laws of resistance in a fluid and hydraulics, offering advice on the construction of new dikes along the canals of Venice.
* Riccardi I.43.7; Brunet I.384; DSB I.229; Nouvelle Biographie Generale XLII.338; C. Boyer, The Concept of Calculus, ch.4.
$US7500
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