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Archimedes, Apollonius & Theodosius 1675

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Title: Opera
Author: Archimedes
Description: 3 parts in 1 volume, comprising: Archimedes. Opera. * Apollonius of Perga. Conica. * Theodosius of Tripolis. Sphærica. Edited by Isaac Barrow. [8], 144, 245-285 [i.e. 185], [1] blank, [1] errata, [1] blank; [4], 104; [4], 38 pp. 29 engraved plates (14, 12 & 3 respectively). (4to) 7¾x6¼, modern brown full morocco, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, raised bands. First English Edition.The first editions of Archimedes, Apollonius and Theodosius to be published in England. The addition of these three classics of mathematics generally, and geometry in particular, to the more widely available Euclid, showed that English mathematical publishing was coming of age and catching up with that on the continent, twelve years before the publication of Newton's Principia. To Archimedes we owe much of modern analytical geometry, mechanics and hydrostatics, including practical applications to pulleys and levers. Apollonius's conics (the four first books here being all that survived in Greek) recognized that the parabola, ellipse and hyperbola (names coined in this treatise) were all special cases of the conic section. The treatise by Theodosius, inventor of a universal sundial, covers spherical geometry. Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), eminent mathematician and royalist theologian, was appointed professor of mathematics at Cambridge in 1663, but in 1669 turned over the professorship to his twenty-two-year-old pupil Isaac Newton in order to devote himself to theology. While his mathematical career was hampered by his royalism during the interregnum, his own preference for theology and his death at the age of forty-seven, he still paved the way for Newton and the ascendancy of British mathematics. The three present works, planned for issue both separately and together, each have their own title-page, pagination and signature markings. In the present issue in one volume, the original publishers added a general title at the beginning and cancelled leaf A3 (apparently the "Brevitatis Gratia." leaf noted in some issues. In the present copy, A2 is bound before the part-title A1). With the armorial bookplate of Herbert Jacob of St. Stephens in Kent, with female figures holding a rolled document and playing a cello, with the motto "otium cum libris" on the verso of the general title. Also with early stamps of the Inner Temple Library (one of the Inns of Court) in London, and with a manuscript diagram tipped in facing p. 136. A seminal publication in the history of British mathematics. Honeyman 135; Horblit Library 54; Wing A-3621.
Heading: Place Published: London
Publisher: Guil. Goodbid & Rob. Scott
Date Published: 1675