II. First edition of Peletier's Algbre, printed with phonetic spelling. 'Peletier wrote L'Algbre (1554) in French in his own orthographic style. In this work he adopted several original and ingenious ideas from Stifel's Arithmetica integra (1544) and showed himself to have been strongly influenced by Cardano. Peletier's work presented the achievements already reached in Germany and Italy, and he was the first mathematician to see relations between coefficients and roots of equations' (DSB).

Provenance: the Earls of Macclesfield, Shirburn Castle, with engraved bookplate, shelfmark on front pastedown, and blindstamp Macclesfield crest on blank margins of first two leaves

I. Burmeister 34; Steck III.4; Thomas-Stanford 28; OCLC: Harvard, Washington, New York Public Library, Lehigh, Brown, Yale, and Michigan; II. Cartier 284; OCLC: Yale, Michigan, Harvard, Washington, Lehigh, Brown, and New York Public">

W. P. Watson Antiquarian Books

EUCLID. Georg Joachim RHETICUS ed. Elementorum geometricorum libri sex, conversi in Latinum sermonem a Ioach. Camerario... Leipzig, Valentin Bapst, 1549  1549

[bound with:] PELETIER, Jacques. L'Algbre ... de partie an deux Livres... Lyon, Ian de Tournes, 1554.

2 vols in one, 8vo (160 x 98 mm), I: pp [xvi] 119 [1, blank], text in Latin and Greek, with Rheticus' obelisk device on title and numerous woodcut diagrams in text; II: pp [xx] 229 [9, without terminal blank]; fine copies in eighteenth century English calf. 14,000

I. First edition of Rheticus' edition of the enunciations of Euclid, intended as a textbook for his students at the University of Leipzig. After several years teaching there Rheticus was appointed dean in 1548.
Rheticus is famous for his role in publicising Copernicus' system and publishing the De revolutionibus (1542). 'The momentous meeting between Rheticus and Copernicus precipitated the beginning of modern astronomy. The reviver of the geokinetic system had long resisted friendly entreaties to release his masterpiece for publication, but permitted Rheticus to write a Narratio prima (First Report) about De revolutionibus... The work was the earliest printed announcement to the educated public of a rival to the Ptolemaic system, which had dominated men's minds for fourteen hundred years' (DSB). As a result of the reception of the Narratio prima (1540), Copernicus entrusted his manuscript to Rheticus who arranged for its publication in Nuremberg.
Rheticus is also known for his extensive trigonometric tables, '"a labor of twelve years, while I always had to support a certain number of arithmeticians for these computations," Rheticus had informed Ramus in 1568' (quoted from DSB).
II. First edition of Peletier's Algbre, printed with phonetic spelling. 'Peletier wrote L'Algbre (1554) in French in his own orthographic style. In this work he adopted several original and ingenious ideas from Stifel's Arithmetica integra (1544) and showed himself to have been strongly influenced by Cardano. Peletier's work presented the achievements already reached in Germany and Italy, and he was the first mathematician to see relations between coefficients and roots of equations' (DSB).

Provenance: the Earls of Macclesfield, Shirburn Castle, with engraved bookplate, shelfmark on front pastedown, and blindstamp Macclesfield crest on blank margins of first two leaves

I. Burmeister 34; Steck III.4; Thomas-Stanford 28; OCLC: Harvard, Washington, New York Public Library, Lehigh, Brown, Yale, and Michigan; II. Cartier 284; OCLC: Yale, Michigan, Harvard, Washington, Lehigh, Brown, and New York Public

14000

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